A group trip guidethe itinerary, the bookings and the local picks, on one link

Method

1. 1

   Give your assistant the bookings, not the numbers

   Collect the booking confirmations and the flight times and give them to whichever assistant you use, as files or pasted text in the assistant itself. Ask it to build a Travel shelf and one document, Portugal, June 2027 — Lisbon, Porto and the Douro: an overview that is the itinerary at a glance, a line per day; a finding per day, titled “Day 3, Saturday 12 June — Sintra, then Santo António”; and a finding per booking with the address, check-in and check-out, beds, stairs, what is included and the cancellation terms.

   Tell it never to copy a confirmation number, booking reference or passport detail. Where one would go, it writes where it is kept: “Confirmation in Rita’s email, subject Your stay in Alfama.” A reference and a surname are often enough to change or cancel a booking.

2. 2

   Fix up the days in the editor

   Open the document and press Edit. The assistant knows the bookings; it does not know your family. Under each day, add the plan in order, the meeting point, how to get there from where you slept, and the rain plan. Say who can skip what: “Avó and Avô stay in the old town if the palace walk is too steep; the rest meet them at 4 p.m.”

   Check every booking against its email: dates, addresses, times. Keep the overview to a line a day, because it is all most of the family will read. Refer to children by role, “the teenagers”, never by full name.

3. 3

   Ask your assistant for local picks, with sources

   For each thing you need to choose, dinner for ten in Porto, the Sintra palace tickets, a boat on the Douro, ask your assistant to research it on the web and file what it finds as a new document on the Travel shelf, one finding per option, each with its source links and the date of the page. Describe the group honestly: ages, walking sticks, the vegetarian, the budget. This needs an assistant with web search; Claude and ChatGPT have it.

   Keep those documents private. Check hours, prices and booking rules on each place’s own site yourself: they change, and an assistant can cite a page that does not say what it claims. Copy the ones you choose into the day’s finding with the source.

4. 4

   Settle the arguments in the margin

   Everyone has a view, and they send it to you in the group chat. When one matters, select the line it is about and leave a Note: “Rui wants the port tasting in Gaia; Maria says not with the teenagers.” The family cannot see notes; they are your working record.

   When you decide, write a Decision finding that says what you chose and why: “Train, not a hired car, to Porto: ten people, two cars, and nobody wants to drive in Lisbon.” It saves having the argument twice.

5. 5

   Share it with a password and an end date

   The week before you leave, press Share on the trip document. Add a password and set the expiry to a week after you get home. Copy the link as it appears; know.sh shows it only once. Send the link in the group chat and the password another way, a call or a separate message.

   From each finding’s own page, leave out what the family does not need: who owes whom, the private research, anything with a home address. Put the document in Focus the same week.

6. 6

   Keep it right on the road

   Plans change on the platform. Open the day in the know.sh iOS app, which is in TestFlight beta, and edit it: “Train delayed, meet at the café opposite the station at 2 p.m.” The link shows the document as it is now, so the next time anyone opens it, they see the change.

   After the trip, the link expires on its own. Keep the document, and add a last finding, What we would do again, for the next time someone says “we should all go somewhere”.