travel

the useful part of an assistant that can pay for things is a trip arranged while you were doing something else: the flight found, the hotel picked, both booked with your yes, and the references where you will need them at the desk. yours does that, and it never books without asking, because a flight is not a purchase that should happen silently. this page is how a trip goes, what the limits are, where the paperwork lives, and the plain state of the switch for your agent today.

what can it do?

find flights and stays. describe the trip and it searches live fares and live stay rates, brings back options with prices, and answers the follow-up questions a good travel agent would: which one is refundable, what the reviews say, what the cancellation terms are.

find me a flight to lisbon on the 24th, back on the 27th, morning departures, and a hotel walkable to alfama under 100 a night with free cancellation

book with your approval. pick, and it asks you to approve the booking at the exact price. say yes and it books through the travel rail; say no and nothing moves. it tells you the booking reference the moment it has one.

watch the flight. ask it for the live status of a flight and it tells you; on the day, it can watch a flight you are booked on and tell you about delays and gate changes before the airport does.

manage what it booked. it can list your bookings, pull one up, and quote what a cancellation would cost before you decide.

what are the limits?

every booking asks, whatever the amount; there is no just-do-it line for travel. how the rest of the limit works depends on what pays, and the rail offers two ways.

your card at the travel service, which is the default. you keep a card on file with the service, in your own account. when you approve a booking, that card is charged at the price you approved; the service sends a code to your phone to check it is you, and your bank may ask you to confirm, as it would for any purchase. the payment never passes through us, so our numbers below are a rule your agent follows before it asks you, not a wall our servers hold; there, the wall is your yes on that exact booking and the code in your hand.

your agent's own wallet, when you tell it to. if you ask it to pay from its wallet, and the fare allows it (fares sold direct by an airline do not), the payment runs through the spend rail: above $1,200 for a single booking, or $3,000 of travel in a day, the answer is no before anything is paid, and that no is held on our servers. you can lower either number from the permissions room, and you cannot raise them above those. spending and approvals has the whole system.

either way, nothing is booked without your yes at the exact price, and a fare that changes between the search and the booking comes back to you before anything is charged.

where is my booking?

instaclaw.io/trips. each trip is a card with what was booked, the dates, what was paid, the booking reference, the receipt, and the cancellation window with a live countdown. the page never changes a booking; the button on each card opens the conversation with your agent about that trip, and the agent is the one that acts.

how does it connect to the travel rail?

the booking rail is a travel service your agent talks to directly. searching needs nothing from you. booking needs you to sign in to that service once, from your agent's request, so that bookings are made in your name and appear in your own account with the airline or hotel; your agent never holds your login, and it never sees or sends your card number: the card lives with the service, and your agent only ever chooses between the cards you already saved there.

can it cancel?

ask it. it quotes the cancellation first, tells you what, if anything, comes back, and cancels only on your yes.

what does it not book?

cars, restaurants, and anything that is not a flight, a stay, or a package the rail offers. it does not book on a card of yours without your yes on that exact booking, and it does not pretend a search found nothing when a site refused it; it says so.

what is switched on for my agent today?

searching is on. booking is not switched on for any agent yet. the rail described on this page is being wired to your agent, and a platform-wide switch stays closed until it is; releasing that switch is the last step, not the first. no customer has booked a trip through their agent yet. your agent will tell you it can search but not book rather than trying and failing, and this page changes the day booking opens for your agent.

what next

• spending and approvals: the limits every booking runs under
• your agent's wallet: the wallet it pays from
• when something breaks: if a booking reference never arrives