TREK - Self-Hosted Real-Time Collaborative Travel Planner

You’re planning a two-week trip across Iceland with three friends. The spreadsheet has 14 tabs, the Google Doc has 8 contributors, half the budget is in a Splitwise group, the packing list is in someone’s Notes app, and nobody can agree on where you stayed in Reykjavik last time. TREK is the self-hosted answer to all of that — one app where the four of you edit the trip in real time, the map shows every reservation, budgets split per-person and per-currency, and packing lists are templated. The unusual twist for 2026: TREK ships an OAuth-secured MCP server, so Claude or any MCP-aware AI can plan trips on your behalf with explicitly-granted scopes.

What is TREK?

TREK is a self-hostable travel planner with real-time collaboration. WebSocket sync means every change across multiple users appears instantly; addons cover budgets, packing lists, document attachments, group chat, vacation calendars, visited-country atlases, and a magazine-style travel journal. Built on Node.js 22 + React 18, single Docker container, AGPL-licensed.

“A self-hosted, real-time collaborative travel planner — with maps, budgets, packing lists, a journal, and AI built in.”

TREK on GitHub TREK Live Demo TREK Discord

What makes it different

• 🔄 Real-time WebSocket sync — multi-user edits appear instantly across all connected devices
• 🗺️ 3D maps — Leaflet (default) or Mapbox GL with 3D buildings, terrain, photo markers, clustering, route visualization
• 💰 Multi-currency budgets — per-person / per-day splits, category pie charts, multi-currency awareness
• 🧳 Packing lists — categories, templates, user assignment, progress tracking, optional bag weight distribution
• 📓 Travel journal — magazine-style entries, photos from Immich or Synology, maps, moods (Journey addon)
• 🌍 Atlas addon — world map of visited countries, bucket list, travel stats, streak tracking
• 🤖 OAuth 2.1 MCP server — 150+ tools, 30 resources, 27 scopes across 13 permission groups; addon-aware
• 📱 PWA — installable on iOS / Android, offline support via Workbox-managed Service Worker
• 🆔 OIDC SSO — Google, Apple, Authentik, Keycloak, generic; TOTP 2FA built in
• 🌍 15 languages — including Arabic with RTL support
• 🛡️ Hardened compose — read_only: true, cap_drop: ALL, no-new-privileges, tmpfs /tmp
• ⚖️ AGPL-3.0 — fully open source

The MCP angle (the genuinely novel feature)

The MCP addon is what sets TREK apart from every other self-hosted travel planner. When enabled, TREK exposes an OAuth 2.1-authenticated MCP server with:

• 150+ tools — create trips, plan days, build packing lists, manage budgets, mark countries visited
• 30 resources — readable surfaces (trip details, reservations, budget summaries)
• 27 OAuth scopes across 13 permission groups — fine-grained “Claude can read trips but not delete them”
• Pre-built prompts — trip-summary, packing-list, budget-overview
• Addon-aware — only exposes tools for addons that are actually enabled

This is the connective tissue between the self-hosting world and the AI agent world we’ve covered elsewhere on this site. Hook up Claude Desktop or any MCP-aware AI assistant (OpenClaw , Hermes , custom agents) to your TREK instance, grant the scopes you want, and the AI can plan a trip end-to-end on your behalf. Granular scopes mean you don’t have to trust the AI with everything to give it some access.

The natural pairings on this site

Self-Hosting TREK with Docker

30-second quick start

ENCRYPTION_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 32) docker run -d -p 3000:3000 \
  -e ENCRYPTION_KEY=$ENCRYPTION_KEY \
  -v ./data:/app/data -v ./uploads:/app/uploads \
  mauriceboe/trek

Open http://localhost:3000. The admin account is auto-seeded — credentials are printed to docker logs trek unless you pass ADMIN_EMAIL / ADMIN_PASSWORD env vars.

Production Docker Compose

The compose below is adapted from the upstream README. The security flags are load-bearing — don’t strip them when copy-pasting:

services:
  app:
    image: mauriceboe/trek:latest
    container_name: trek
    read_only: true
    security_opt:
      - no-new-privileges:true
    cap_drop:
      - ALL
    cap_add:
      - CHOWN
      - SETUID
      - SETGID
    tmpfs:
      - /tmp:noexec,nosuid,size=64m
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      - NODE_ENV=production
      - PORT=3000
      - ENCRYPTION_KEY=${ENCRYPTION_KEY:-}   # openssl rand -hex 32
      - TZ=${TZ:-UTC}
      - APP_URL=${APP_URL:-}                  # required for OIDC + email links
      # - FORCE_HTTPS=true                    # behind a TLS-terminating proxy
      # - TRUST_PROXY=1
      # - OIDC_ISSUER=https://auth.example.com
      # - OIDC_CLIENT_ID=trek
      # - OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET=supersecret
    volumes:
      - ./data:/app/data
      - ./uploads:/app/uploads
    restart: unless-stopped
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "wget", "-qO-", "http://localhost:3000/api/health"]
      interval: 30s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 15s

The security defaults shipped here are unusually strong for a self-hosted project:

• read_only: true — the container filesystem is immutable; writes only through declared volumes
• cap_drop: ALL + minimal cap_add — drops every Linux capability except the three needed for user/group ID handling
• no-new-privileges:true — no escalation via setuid binaries
• tmpfs /tmp with noexec,nosuid — /tmp is in-memory and non-executable

Most projects ship docker-compose.yml files with none of these. Keep them.

    environment:
      - APP_URL=https://trek.example.com
      - OIDC_ISSUER=https://auth.example.com
      - OIDC_CLIENT_ID=trek
      - OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET=...
      - OIDC_DISPLAY_NAME=SSO
      - OIDC_ADMIN_CLAIM=groups
      - OIDC_ADMIN_VALUE=app-trek-admins

helm repo add trek https://mauriceboe.github.io/TREK
helm repo update
helm install trek trek/trek

Updating

docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

Data in data/ and uploads/ is preserved across updates. The maintainer’s auto-backup system creates scheduled snapshots regardless — visible in the admin panel.

Encryption key rotation

If you’re upgrading from an older version that derived encryption from JWT_SECRET:

docker exec -it trek node --import tsx scripts/migrate-encryption.ts

TREK vs the Alternatives

The honest read:

• Pick TREK if you want self-hosted collaboration + the option to wire AI assistants in via MCP
• Pick Wanderlog if you want the most polished commercial trip planner and don’t mind SaaS lock-in
• Pick Tripit if you just need an itinerary inbox and don’t care about collaboration or planning
• Pick Google Maps Saved if your “planning” is dropping pins on a map and zero collaboration

TREK occupies a niche no SaaS competitor does: a full-featured planner where the data is yours, the AI integration is open, and the collaboration model doesn’t require a paid tier per user.

Conclusion

TREK is the most feature-complete self-hosted travel planner currently shipping, and the MCP server addon is genuinely forward-looking — it puts TREK in the small group of self-hosted apps that ship a first-class AI integration via the open MCP standard rather than just calling an OpenAI API. The hardened Docker defaults are also a refreshing change from projects that publish docker-compose.yml with no security flags.

For groups of travelers who want their plans on their own server, with Dawarich-style historical context, Immich photos in their journal, and an AI assistant able to help plan via OAuth-scoped MCP — TREK is the right shape of tool today.

Related tools worth knowing:

• Dawarich — where you’ve been (passive GPS); pairs naturally with TREK (where you’re going)
• Immich — TREK’s Journey addon embeds Immich photos in travel journal entries
• OpenClaw / Hermes Agent — MCP-aware AI assistants that can plan trips via TREK’s MCP server
• Wanderlog — closest commercial competitor; SaaS, not self-hostable