TravelBrain is my third iOS app under kuroneko‑cmd.dev, and probably the most personal one so far.
I have always found trip planning oddly stressful. Not the traveling itself — that part is often wonderful — but the act of deciding what goes where. You stumble upon a hotel deal in February, then a cheap flight in April, then an interesting restaurant recommendation from a friend. By the time you sit down to “plan the trip,” all those ideas are scattered across notes, tabs, and screenshots.
TravelBrain is my answer to that. An offline travel planner where you collect little pieces of travel inspiration over time, and when you’re ready, you drag them onto a timeline to see if they actually fit.
The idea of building blocks for trips
The core metaphor is simple: collect first, arrange later.
You add inspirations into an inbox — hotels, flights, cafes, attractions, anything. Each card can hold a price, a location, notes, and whatever else you want to remember. These pieces just sit there until you’re ready to build.
When you are ready, you drag them onto a day-by-day timeline. Suddenly you see whether that fancy restaurant actually fits between your morning flight and afternoon museum visit. Or whether that hotel is too far from everything else.
It is like LEGO for trips. The pieces stay separate until you snap them together, and you can always pull them apart again.
Why offline? Why manual?
A lot of travel apps today lean on AI to generate itineraries. You tell them “five days in Tokyo” and they return a packed schedule of things to do.
That is useful for some people, but it was never how I wanted to plan. My best trips have come from ideas I collected months before — a coffee shop someone mentioned, a side street I bookmarked, a flight deal I spotted late at night. AI cannot generate those.
TravelBrain intentionally does not fetch data from the internet. Every inspiration is something you typed in yourself. That keeps the app offline and private, but more importantly, it keeps the trip yours.
Pro features: export what you built
The core planning experience is free. But for Pro users, there are two export features I’m genuinely proud of:
Export as Long Image — When your itinerary is done, you can generate a beautiful template-based image of the whole trip. Great for sharing on social media or just printing out for your travel folder.
Export JSON for AI — This one is a little unusual. Instead of building AI generation into the app, TravelBrain exports your itinerary as structured JSON. You take that data and paste it into any AI tool — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude — along with whatever creative prompt you like.
Why do it this way instead of building AI features directly?
- Your data stays yours. You decide whether to share it with an AI service, and which one.
- Models keep improving. Whatever is best next month, you can use it.
- No redundant subscriptions. If you already pay for an AI service, you don’t need to pay twice.
It is a small trade-off in convenience, but I think it is worth it.
Privacy-first, as always
Just like Simple Warm Reminder and KeepFlame, TravelBrain collects no personal data. There are no analytics SDKs, no advertising trackers, and no server to phone home to.
Your inspirations and itineraries stay on your iPhone. If you want to back them up, you can manually export to iCloud. But even that is optional and initiated by you.
Where to find TravelBrain
If you want to give it a try:
- Product page: https://www.kuroneko-cmd.dev/products/travelbrain/
- App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/travelbrain/id6756530932
And if the earlier apps sound interesting:
- KeepFlame (habit tracker): https://www.kuroneko-cmd.dev/products/keepflame/
- Simple Warm Reminder (calm reminders): https://www.kuroneko-cmd.dev/products/simple-warm-reminder/