Atlas
Overview
Every trip app is a single-planner tool with an invite button. I designed the screen where the group actually disagrees.
Services
Year
2026
The group chat that never becomes a trip
Someone drops six reels. Three people react. Two weeks pass, and the trip either dies or one person plans it alone. Nobody's short on ideas. Four people's ideas just don't become one plan on their own.
Before designing anything, I used the tools that claim to fix this.
What I found going through Wanderlog and Mindtrip end to end
Two things. I typed my preferences into Mindtrip's onboarding chat and they never reached the trip. Its AI runs on a separate database and can't read what you save. Wanderlog's is a bolted-on chatbot you can only paste answers back from.
But the real gap: neither has any idea what to do when a group disagrees. Their "group" is an invite button and a shared list. The one screen a group actually needs, the moment two people want incompatible things, doesn't exist in either. They're single-planner tools wearing group clothing.
So I stopped designing a planner and designed the disagreement.
The default answer is a vote, and a vote is the wrong tool
The obvious move when a group chooses is to vote. It feels fair, but it gives you one winner and three losers. The café person loses and quietly resents a plan they said yes to.
I didn't want a fairer vote. I wanted a plan nobody has to lose.
Before everyone’s saved places and the constraints they arrive with, grouped by person.
The day splits instead of picking a winner
This is the screen it's all built around.
Most of a trip is uncontested. The clash is narrow: Day 2, Aarav saved a steep trek, Dev's knee can't do it.
Dev taps "not for me." The trek doesn't disappear. It stays and loses Dev's avatar, so it now carries only Aarav's face. Meera and Dev keep the place they added.
The day didn't pick a winner, it split. I kept the place and dropped the avatar instead of removing it, because removing it deletes the person who wanted it. The face on the block is the whole mechanic: you see who's where, and nobody lost.
The AI flags, it doesn't decide
Every other tool's AI resolves the conflict, which makes it a fourth opinion nobody asked for. Mine names the clash out loud and stops. It can find a new place or suggest a new trip, but the group decides. And it works from the folders, your real saves, not a walled-off database.
The contested day. The AI names the clash, flags the budget privately, and stops.
Agreement makes the plan
Everyone reacts on their own screen, as themselves, so no one loud voice speaks for the group. The plan doesn't exist until "I'm in, 1 of 3" becomes 3 of 3. That's the moment there's a trip.
Dignity over data
Budget is measured against the shared ₹9k, never anyone’s private limit. Dev’s tighter number stays on Dev’s screen, where he can act on it quietly instead of announcing it to the group. I didn’t want anyone’s limits on display to their friends.
The itinerary knows about the split
Day 2 forks on the timeline, then rejoins for dinner. One group with a solo stretch inside it, not two people ditching a third.
Scattered → resolved → settled. Day 2 splits by face: Aarav treks, Meera and Dev take the cafés, everyone reconverges for dinner.
What I cut
Sync only, group decides live in one session. Async is a different product. No booking, that's transacting not deciding. No discovery feed, the problem is too many ideas, not too few.