TREK

TREK is a collaborative trip planner. A trip gets a map, a day-by-day plan, bookings, a costs ledger that works out who owes whom, packing lists, notes, files, and a journal to fill in while you are away. Everyone on the trip edits the same plan, live, so the group chat stops being the itinerary.

It is built for the trip as it actually happens, not only the planning. The app installs to your phone as a PWA and keeps working offline, expenses can be entered in whatever currency the receipt says, and each trip can be subscribed to from your calendar so flight times and bookings show up where you already look.

ElfHosted runs the unmodified upstream TREK release. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by the TREK project.

When does TREK make sense?

You travel as a group and are tired of splitting costs in a spreadsheet and the plan across five chats.
You like a proper itinerary: places on a map, ordered by day, with travel between them.
You want to share the plan with people who are not editing it. A read-only share link opens in any browser.
You already log trips after the fact in AdventureLog. TREK covers the other end: planning and running the trip itself.

Get a 7-day trial of Trip Planner, powered by TREK!

How do I access TREK?

TREK is available:

From your dashboard: https://your-username.elfhosted.com
Directly: https://your-username-trek.elfhosted.com

Signed-in users see their own URLs

The addresses above show the general pattern. Sign in and these become your personal, clickable links.

How do I use it?

TREK has its own accounts. Yours is already set up as the instance administrator, under the email address on your ElfHosted account, but you choose its password yourself:

Open TREK and click Forgot password? on its login page.
Enter the email address on your ElfHosted account. TREK emails you a link to set your password, valid for 60 minutes.
Set your password and sign in.

While you're there, switch on two-factor authentication under Settings. If the email doesn't arrive, check your spam folder, then ask us in Discord.

Plan a trip

Click New Trip on the dashboard, give it a title and dates, and pick the currency you will settle up in.
Add places to the map and drag them into days on the plan.
Open the Costs tab to record expenses as they happen. TREK converts each one into the trip currency and suggests who should pay whom at the end.
Build a packing list, attach booking confirmations and tickets, and write up each day in the journal.

The built-in help at /help inside TREK matches the version you are running, and the TREK wiki covers every feature in detail.

Travel with other people

Trip members sign in to TREK with their own accounts, and those accounts sit behind your ElfHosted login like the rest of the app. Create them from Admin, then Users, and add them to a trip from its Share button.

For anyone who only needs to follow along, use a share link instead:

Trip share link: from a trip's Share button, click Create link. Anyone with the link sees a read-only view of the trip, and you choose whether bookings, packing, costs and chat are included.
Public journey link: publish a journal so friends and family can read it.
Calendar feed: from the trip's Export menu, choose Subscribe to calendar, or subscribe to all your trips from the dashboard.

These three open without an ElfHosted login, so they work for anyone you send them to. The token in each address is what protects it, so treat those links like passwords. Delete a share link or regenerate a calendar feed and the old address stops working.

Connect other apps with the API

TREK has a read-only API that other software can use to read your trips, such as a Homepage dashboard widget, Dawarich, or your own scripts. It can list your trips, fetch one with its days, places, reservations and accommodations, read your bucket list, and return travel totals. It cannot change anything.

In TREK, open Settings, then Integrations, and under API Keys click Create key.
Copy the key straight away. It starts with trek_ and is only shown once.
Give it to the other app, which sends it as a header:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer trek_your_key_here" \
     https://<yourname>-trek.elfhosted.com/api/v1/trips

X-API-Key: trek_your_key_here works too. The available endpoints are /api/v1/trips, /api/v1/trips/<id>, /api/v1/bucket-list and /api/v1/stats, and the TREK wiki describes what each returns.

These requests skip your ElfHosted login, so the key is the only thing protecting your trips. Treat it like a password, make one key per app, and delete a key from the same screen to cut that app off.

Plan trips with an AI assistant

TREK has a built-in MCP server, so an AI assistant such as Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor can work on your trips directly: create a trip, add places and days, build packing lists, log costs and add bookings. Its changes show up in TREK straight away, the same as edits made in the app.

In TREK, open Admin, then Addons, and switch on MCP.
Add https://<yourname>-trek.elfhosted.com/mcp to your assistant as a custom connector or remote MCP server. In Claude Code, for example:

claude mcp add --transport http trek https://<yourname>-trek.elfhosted.com/mcp

The assistant opens TREK's consent screen in your browser, behind your ElfHosted login. Sign in, choose what it may read and change, and approve.

Your assistant talks to TREK from outside, so the MCP address skips your ElfHosted login, but nothing gets through it without a token you approved on that consent screen. To cut an assistant off, remove it under Settings, then Integrations, then MCP, or revoke its session from MCP Access in the admin panel.

Is AI included?

Yes. TREK can fall back to AI when it imports a booking confirmation it can't read on its own, and that works with the AI included with your plan. In TREK, open Admin, then Addons:

Switch on AI Parsing.
Set Provider to OpenAI. Not Local, which only talks to an Ollama server.
Set Base URL to http://elfhosted-internal.bree/v1.
Type anything in API Key, for example elfhosted. The included AI knows it's you without one.
Type anything in Model, for example default, and save.

Then use Import from file on a trip's Bookings tab as usual. The AI only reads files that TREK's own importer can't, and every booking it finds opens for you to check before it's saved. Scanned PDFs with no text in them can't be read this way.

It runs on an allowance included with your plan, which suits importing your own bookings. If you'd rather use your own OpenAI or Anthropic account, set that provider and key instead; its usage is then billed by your provider directly.

Does TREK send email?

Yes. Password-reset links and email notifications go out through ElfHosted's mail service, so there's nothing to set up for password resets. To send notifications by email:

In TREK, open Admin, then Notifications, and switch on Email (SMTP). Leave the fields blank: your instance is already connected.
Each user then picks which events they want by email under Settings, then Notifications.

TREK's Send test email button only becomes clickable once the SMTP Host field has something in it. To use it, enter 127.0.0.1 as the host and 1025 as the port, leave the user and password blank, and click it. Emails arrive from trek@mg.elfhosted.com. If you'd rather send through your own mail server, set TREK's SMTP_HOST, SMTP_PORT, SMTP_USER, SMTP_PASS and SMTP_FROM with ElfBot (or ask Sam), and TREK restarts to use them.

Optional extras

Photo memories from Immich or Synology are a switch in the admin panel too, and need your own account details. Plugins are not available on ElfHosted.

TREK also works with

How do I get support for TREK?

For general use of TREK, refer to the official site or to one of the links in the resources section below.
For specific support re your ElfHosted configuration / account, see the ElfHosted support options!

You can contribute directly to the development of TREK using the following:

TREK resources

Your content, your responsibility

ElfHosted provides TREK as a hosted application — we do not supply content, accounts, or third-party credentials. You are responsible for ensuring that your use of this app complies with applicable laws and our Acceptable Use Policy. If you have questions about what is or isn't permitted, please reach out — we're happy to help.

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