seats-aero

Travel Hacking Toolkit

AI-powered travel hacking with points, miles, and award flights. Drop-in skills and MCP servers for OpenCode, Claude Code, and Codex.

Ask your AI to find you a 60,000-mile business class flight to Tokyo. It'll search award availability across 27 mileage programs, compare against cash prices, check your loyalty balances, and tell you the best play.

Quick Start

Install via plugin (no clone)

The easiest way to use the toolkit. Pick your tool:

Claude Code

Inside Claude Code, run:

/plugin marketplace add borski/travel-hacking-toolkit
/plugin install travel-hacker@borski

Done. 42 skills, 7 MCP servers (6 free + LiteAPI which needs a key), and the travel-hacker subagent are installed. Run claude from anywhere and ask it to plan a trip.

To verify the install, run /travel-hacker:getting-started inside Claude Code. It tells you which API keys are configured and points at the local setup script for the missing ones. Or in your shell: claude plugin list | grep travel-hacker should show the plugin.

Codex

In your terminal:

codex plugin marketplace add borski/travel-hacking-toolkit

Then start Codex and the plugin appears in /plugins. Codex pulls the marketplace catalog from the repo (.agents/plugins/marketplace.json) and the plugin manifest from plugins/travel-hacking-toolkit/.codex-plugin/plugin.json, so the install is one command.

Cowork (Claude Desktop's agent panel)

Cowork itself doesn't expose /plugin slash commands, so you can't install plugins from inside a Cowork chat. Install via Claude Code first; Cowork picks it up automatically because both share ~/.claude/plugins/.

1. In your terminal, run claude
2. In Claude Code, run the two install commands from the Claude Code section above
3. Open Cowork inside Claude Desktop. The plugin is already there.

Claude Desktop's chat UI doesn't support the plugin format yet, so use Cowork inside the same app for the full experience.

Configure API keys

The 6 free MCP servers (Skiplagged, Kiwi, Trivago, Ferryhopper, Airbnb, Seats.aero) work immediately with zero keys. Cash flight and hotel search work out of the box, and so does cached award search for flights in the next 60 days.

To unlock award search and the rest of the toolkit, you need API keys set as environment variables in your shell. Run the local setup script:

macOS / Linux / WSL / Git Bash:

bash <(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/borski/travel-hacking-toolkit/main/scripts/setup-keys.sh)

Windows (PowerShell):

iwr https://raw.githubusercontent.com/borski/travel-hacking-toolkit/main/scripts/setup-keys.ps1 -OutFile $env:TEMP\setup-keys.ps1
powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File $env:TEMP\setup-keys.ps1
Remove-Item $env:TEMP\setup-keys.ps1

The script prompts for each key with masked input, validates them (rejects values with single quotes that would break the export, plus a per-key minimum length sanity check), writes them to the right shell rc with a backup, and never echoes the values back. The exports are single-quoted so other shell metacharacters in the key are safe. Keys never enter your terminal scrollback or any chat session. The /travel-hacker:getting-started skill inside Claude Code points at the same script.

The 4 highest-value keys:

Other keys (SerpAPI, RapidAPI, LiteAPI, TripAdvisor, RESROBOT, Rejseplanen, Entur) extend specific skills. The setup skill covers them too. See the full API key reference for signup links.

Five Docker-based skills (Southwest, American Airlines, Chase, Amex, TicketsAtWork) handle sites that don't have public APIs, plus a shared base image. They auto-pull on first use. See the Docker Images section for credentials and configuration.

Manual setup (if you'd rather not use the skill)

Add to your shell rc (~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc, etc.):

export SEATS_AERO_API_KEY="your-key-here"
export DUFFEL_API_KEY_LIVE="your-key-here"
export IGNAV_API_KEY="your-key-here"
export AWARDWALLET_API_KEY="your-key-here"
export AWARDWALLET_USER_ID="your-user-id"

Reload (source ~/.zshrc) or open a new terminal, then run claude.

If you keep secrets in 1Password, you can resolve at launch instead:

op run --no-masking --env-file=.env -- claude

The --no-masking flag is required because op run's default output masking interferes with Claude Code's TTY detection and triggers a non-interactive prompt error. Masking only affects stdout, not the env vars themselves, so the keys still get to claude correctly.

(See 1Password CLI docs for the .env template syntax.)

The toolkit reads keys from the shell environment because plugin userConfig doesn't propagate to skills that shell out to scripts (verified empirically; related upstream issues anthropics/claude-code#11927, #39125).

Clone path (for OpenCode users or contributors)

OpenCode doesn't have a plugin format, so OpenCode users clone the repo. Contributors who want to hack on the toolkit also clone.

git clone https://github.com/borski/travel-hacking-toolkit.git
cd travel-hacking-toolkit

# macOS / Linux / WSL / Git Bash
./scripts/setup.sh

# Windows (PowerShell or cmd)
.\scripts\setup.cmd

The setup script picks your tool (OpenCode, Claude Code, Codex, or all three), creates your API key config file, installs dependencies, and optionally installs skills system-wide for OpenCode and Claude Code.

On Windows the .cmd wrapper launches scripts\setup.ps1 with an ExecutionPolicy bypass so nothing needs to be unblocked first.

Then launch your tool from inside the repo:

# OpenCode
opencode

# Claude Code (loads the plugin from the working tree, no install needed)
claude --plugin-dir .

# Codex
source .env && codex

claude --plugin-dir . loads the plugin (skills, MCP servers, and the travel-hacker subagent) directly from your clone. Changes you make to the toolkit are picked up immediately. Useful when you're contributing.

What's Included

MCP Servers (real-time tools)

Skills (API knowledge for your AI)

Start here: the orchestration skills call everything else automatically.

The skill tables below are auto-generated from skills/*/SKILL.md frontmatter by scripts/gen-skill-tables.sh. Edit the source frontmatter, not the tables. Signup links and API key URLs live in the API Keys & Signup Links section below.

Orchestration

Flights

Credit Card Travel Portals

Hotels and Accommodation