Provides tools for querying OpenStreetMap to discover night candidates and campsites, fill place amenities and host contacts, and enrich vanlife trip planning data from open map sources.
Click on "Deploy Server".
Wait a few minutes for the server to deploy. Once ready, it will show a "Started" state.
In the chat, type @ followed by the MCP server name and your instructions, e.g., "@Vanlife Planner Find a legal overnight stop for my campervan near Innsbruck tonight."
That's it! The server will respond to your query, and you can continue using it as needed.
Here is a step-by-step guide with screenshots.
Plan a road trip in a rooftop tent, a campervan or a motorhome, and let your assistant check every night, route and arrival time against the rules of the road and the hour of sunset.
A plugin for TREK, the self-hosted trip planner: legal nights, sunset-safe arrivals, routes, schedules, supplies, the price and amenities of every place, the hosts' contacts and where each night stands (spotted, in discussion, booked, dropped) — as MCP tools any assistant connected to TREK can call (ChatGPT, Claude…), as warnings in the planner, as chips on each place (hover card, places list) and as a small panel at the foot of the place view.
Related MCP server: wanderlog-mcp
The vehicle is a setting, and the rules follow it, anywhere in the world. A rooftop tent has to be unfolded in daylight, and opening it is camping: by default the plugin applies the strictest rule it knows (the Alps): a campsite, a farm, or private ground with the owner's consent, never public ground. A night it cannot place is flagged to check. Sleeping inside a van or a motorhome without setting anything out is parking in Italy (Codice della strada art. 185), so a motorhome area is fine there, while many South Tyrol municipalities forbid camping on public ground.
Trip check — day by day, at four levels (blocking / to fix / to verify / info): arrival at the night later than sunset minus a margin (computed for the exact date and place); a stop visited on its closing day or outside the hours quoted in its notes; a check-in window or minimum stay not met; a night the vehicle may not use; a farm night to check where local rules apply (South Tyrol: allowed on private ground with the owner's consent, except in protected areas or where a municipal rule forbids it); impossible times; a shopping detour over the limit; nights in a row without water; a place that refuses the vehicle, the dog, or the vehicle's height, length or weight. Every evening of a stay over several nights is a night: the day starts and ends at camp. Bookings are checked against the plan: a booking tied to no night (TREK shows the place booked, but nobody sleeps there), a cancelled night still planned, a booked price unlike the plan, notes still saying "waiting" on a confirmed booking.
One rule per question — where you sleep on an evening (trip.js stayOn), which booking
speaks for a night (night-status.js), what a night costs the whole party and in which currency
(place-info.js nightCost, currencyOf): the check, the night list, the budget, the schedule,
the place panel, the planner columns and the host message all ask the same functions.
Walking routes — each hike's walk drawn dotted on the trip map, from the car park that gives access to it (see Hikes and their car park).
One look everywhere — every colour and pictogram the plugin shows comes from one catalogue,
server/lib/design.js. See Map legend below.
Nights — candidates between the evening's last visit and the next morning's first stop, from OpenStreetMap and, if the instance enables it, park4night; ranked by legality, price and real detour.
Routes — the road of each day with Valhalla for the vehicle (height; length and weight for a motorhome), no tolls except on the motorway days you choose; also two route profiles in the planner's route toggle.
Schedules — start and end of every stop from real drive times.
Supplies — supermarkets, fuel and drinking water along the day's route, with that day's hours.
Price and amenities — per night or per person, dog fee, height/length/weight limits, and the amenities park4night and OpenStreetMap know (dog, water, electricity, toilets, shower, dump station, wifi, bins, laundry, pool, shop, bakery, restaurant or snack bar, bar, mobile data, playground, barbecue, gas bottles, LPG, vehicle wash, open in winter, rooftop tent accepted). The price is TREK's own field; the rest is kept on the place by the plugin. Unknown amenities are filled automatically from OpenStreetMap (the campsite mapped within 150 m) and from park4night (the place a park4night link points to), citing the source; a value a person recorded is never overwritten.
Hosts and nights — the contact of each host (e-mail, phone, WhatsApp, website, name, languages, preferred channel), filled from the place's own notes, OpenStreetMap and park4night; a log of what was asked and answered; the status of every night, kept in TREK's own bookings (a night's status is the strongest of its bookings: booked > in discussion > cancelled); and a ready-to-send information request to a host, in English then French (Italian or German on request), built from what is still unknown about the place. The plugin never sends it: the assistant shows the exact text and waits for your go.
Some places can only be reached at certain hours, or not without a ticket: a mountain toll road
closed to cars after 09:00, a valley road open to cars only in the evening, a car park with
time slots to book. Each place can record, in the widget or with vanlife_place set (null
clears a field):
Field | Meaning |
|
|
|
|
| A booking is required (slot, car park, road permit), where to make it, and a short note (120 characters at most). |
| Toll or ticket per vehicle, and its 3-letter currency (default: the trip's). |
Example, a mountain toll road: {"access_before": "09:00", "booking_required": true, "booking_url": "https://toll-road.example.com", "toll_amount": 30, "toll_currency": "EUR"}.
The trip check then says, from the arrival time of the stop (its own time, or the time the day's
drives give): an arrival after access_before is blocking, an arrival before access_after
is to fix, a booking with none recorded in TREK's bookings or the stop's notes is to verify,
with the link. vanlife_day schedule moves the proposed departure so every access is met.
The toll is added to that day's budget in vanlife_plan_trip. Each recorded field shows as a
small chip on the place: Before 9:00 AM, Booking, Toll €30.00.
The plugin draws no marker of its own: TREK's place markers already carry the state and the kind, and a second marker on top would hide them and steal their clicks. The plugin draws one thing on the map, the dotted walking route of each hike. It keeps every place readable this way:
The colour of a marker is its state, and nothing else:
State | Meaning | |
Booked | the host confirmed the night | |
In discussion | the host was asked, no answer or no confirmation yet | |
Cancelled | the night was dropped | |
Available | planned or not, but neither booked, in discussion nor cancelled — an activity is always blue |
The pictogram is the kind of place: the icon of its TREK category. vanlife_place kind (and
vanlife_night kind) moves a place to the trip's category for that kind, so its pictogram
follows. Three signs have one meaning each, and nothing else ever uses them:
Rule | |
"P" = parking. A car park is always and only the "P" (TREK icon | |
Dotted line = the walking route of a hike, from its car park. The plugin draws nothing else dotted or dashed. | |
Grey = a day's drive route (the "day route" places): it carries no state, and grey is used for nothing else. |
A hike is a walker (TREK icon Footprints on the hike category), never a camera: a viewpoint, a
lake or a village whose name says it is reached on foot ("… on foot", "… à pied") counts as a
hike for the plugin, and kind: "hike" files it in the hike category. The departure and return
of the trip is a home.
A walk always starts at a car park "P" and comes back to that same P: a loop, or an out-and-back to a turnaround point and back the same way. Never from one P to another. The walk is drawn dotted on footpaths (Valhalla pedestrian routing, cached for 30 days); an out-and-back is drawn one way and counted twice.
The car park is the one set on the hike (vanlife_place set.walk.parking_place_id), else a
car park planned right before or after the hike that day, else the nearest one planned that day
within 3 km, or any day within 2 km. The shape is set.walk.shape (loop or out_and_back),
else a loop when the hike's place is the car park itself, else an out-and-back to the hike's
place. set.walk.via (points [lat, lng]) shapes a loop. The tool refuses a walk with no car
park, with no shape, from a place that is not a car park, or whose turnaround is another car
park; the check (vanlife_check_trip) reports such walks, and they are not drawn. A hike that is
not planned gets its walk as soon as it is tied to a planned car park.
Hovering the dotted line gives the hike, the walk and its car park; a click opens the hike
card: loop or out-and-back, the total distance, the climb (from the terrain model), the hiking
time (DIN 33466 rule: 4 km/h, 300 m/h up, 500 m/h down), the start car park, and a link to the
page with the full track and elevation profile: the one set with set.walk.url, else the first
Outdooractive, Komoot, Wikiloc or AllTrails address written in the hike's website or notes. No
link is ever made up: with none, the card says so. vanlife_place filter: "hikes" lists every
hike with its car park, shape, walk and any rule it breaks. Off with the walking routes setting.
One vanlife_place call sets a car park: its price on TREK's own price with its unit
(per: "day" or "hour"), its height limit (max_height_m), and set.parking — opening hours,
payment, motorhomes allowed, overnight allowed, notes and the source address. They show as a
"P" chip on the place (15,00 €/jour, 05:00–23:00 · online booking only · no overnight) and in
the place panel, with the source link.
From an assistant, one sentence sets both: "the farm on day 2, we booked it" is
vanlife_night with kind: "farm" and status: "booked" — the place moves to the trip's farm
category (leaf) and its marker turns green.
Advertised to assistants as plugin_vanlife_<name>; the MCP client needs the opt-in
plugins:use scope.
Tool | What it does |
| All-in-one: check, cheaper legal nights nearby, routes, schedules, budget; proposes by default, writes only when asked. |
| Read-only check of a trip for the user's vehicle, including nights with no contact and hosts who have not answered for over 3 days. |
| Night candidates for one evening (OpenStreetMap, park4night when enabled), with the contacts OpenStreetMap knows. |
| One tool, three actions: |
| Everything about a place: list by filter ( |
|
|
| Drafts the information request to a host (English, then French); sends nothing. |
A whole hike in one call — the hike, its car park and its dotted walk:
{ "tripId": 1,
"create": { "name": "Example lake loop", "lat": 46.69, "lng": 12.08, "kind": "hike", "day_number": 7 },
"set": { "walk": { "parking": { "name": "Example lake car park", "lat": 46.70, "lng": 12.085, "price_amount": 18, "per": "day" },
"shape": "loop", "via": [[46.692, 12.087], [46.689, 12.083]],
"url": "https://www.outdooractive.com/en/route/..." } } }A walk always starts at a car park "P" and comes back to it, as a loop or an out-and-back; a walk from one car park to another is refused.
TREK accepts 8 tools per plugin: the eighth place is left free on purpose.
No tool books, pays or writes to anyone. vanlife_night records what you declare, and every tool
that deals with hosts tells the assistant to show you the exact text and wait for your explicit
validation.
The tools live on TREK's own MCP server, so any assistant that speaks MCP can use them.
In TREK, an admin installs and turns on the plugin (Admin → Plugins) and enables MCP access.
In the assistant, add TREK as a connector or custom app: the MCP address is
https://<your-trek>/mcp, and the sign-in must grant the plugins:use scope (no client
preset asks for it, so request it by name). ChatGPT: Settings → Apps → create an app with that
address. Claude: Settings → Connectors → add a custom connector.
Ask in plain words: "Check trip 1 for my rooftop tent", "Find a cheaper legal night near day 4", "Draft a message to the host of day 6 asking about dogs and late arrival".
After a plugin update, the assistant keeps the old tool list until it is told to reload it: in ChatGPT, open the app's settings and click Refresh tools (Actualiser les outils); in Claude, reconnect the connector.
Warnings banner — blocking and to-verify points, in the user's language.
Place chips — the night's status first (Booked ✓ green, In discussion orange, Dropped red, on places that have a booking), then the price and one chip per amenity the place has (dog, water, electricity first), plus a red chip listing what it lacks when that rules it out: the places list, and the map's hover card once an admin lets the plugin in (Admin → Default user settings → Plugin info on places).
Place card — the widget reads the place's description and notes ("Key : value" lines and
bullet lists, in English, French, Italian, German or Spanish) into one card per kind, with fixed
sections in a fixed order: a hike shows its key figures (distance, climb, descent, time,
difficulty, loop), how to get there, the itinerary as steps, conditions, highlights and links
(track page, map, GPX); a night its price, stay, services, access and reviews; a visit its
figures, opening and access. What it cannot classify stays under Other notes; nothing is
stored twice (the notes stay the record, vanlife_place sheet_set rewrites a line). TREK then
folds its raw copy of the text. The host's contact shows on nights only.
Place panel — a widget at the foot of the place view shows the night's status, the host's
contact (e-mail, phone and website as links, last exchange) and the amenities; it edits the
amenities and the contact, and has a Fill the trip's amenities button. Opening a place with
nothing recorded looks it up once. It sets the night's state too: pick the evening, then
Available (blue: the booking is deleted, the stay stays planned), In discussion (amber),
Booked (green, with an optional confirmation number) or Cancelled (red, with an optional
reason); TREK's map follows at once. Where TREK mounts place-detail widgets in its own place
edit form (mode: 'edit' in the frame context), the widget opens there on its editor.
Settings — TREK's native forms: per user (vehicle, dimensions, dog, target and ceiling price, sunset margin, language…) and per instance (park4night on or off, default language).
Install the plugin from its zip (Admin → Plugins), and grant the permissions it asks for.
Optionally, in Admin → Plugins → Instance settings: turn park4night off, choose the default language.
Each traveller sets the vehicle, its dimensions, the dog, the prices and the sunset margin in Settings → Plugins.
To use the tools from ChatGPT, Claude or another assistant, connect it to TREK's MCP server
with the plugins:use scope; the tools appear as plugin_vanlife_vanlife_*.
Permission | Why |
| Read the trip being checked or planned. |
| Write a route place or a chosen night, only when an assistant is asked to apply; copy a host's website or phone into the place's empty TREK fields. |
| Record the status of a night as a TREK booking (pending, confirmed, cancelled), only when you say so. |
| Keep the price details, amenities, host contacts and exchange log on the place itself (the plugin's own namespaced data; writes need the user's place edit right). |
| Cache of drive times and OpenStreetMap answers; which places were already looked up (ids and dates only). |
| Publish the tools above. |
| The warnings banner (cache only, no network). |
| The two route profiles. |
| The night status, price and amenities chips on each place. |
| The walking route of each hike, drawn dotted on the trip map from the car park that gives access to it. Off with the walking routes setting. |
| Drive times and road geometry; walking routes of the hikes. |
| Campsites, shops, fuel, water and campsite amenities from OpenStreetMap. |
| park4night search and amenities, only if the instance enables it. |
Only coordinates (and, for park4night, the language) leave the server — never names, notes, contacts or anything about the travellers. Host contacts stay in your TREK instance.
park4night publishes no API: the plugin reads the endpoint its own web map uses, which may change without notice. Calls are rate-limited (20 per hour, 3 s apart). Search results are not stored; when amenities are filled, only the yes/no amenities of a place that is already in your trip are copied onto that place, with its park4night number as the source. An admin can turn park4night off in the instance settings, and the plugin then uses OpenStreetMap alone.
Zone outlines are coarse (check a night near a border by hand). The public Overpass server allows few queries per server, so searches may answer "busy, try again in a minute". OpenStreetMap often lacks amenities, and has no reviews. Nothing here books, pays or messages anyone.
npm install
npm test # vitest, mock TREK host, no network
npm run coverage
npm run sync-manifest # copy server/lib/tool-specs.js into trek-plugin.json
npm run validate && npm run packData: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), routing by Valhalla on the FOSSGIS servers, park4night data © park4night.
See CONTRIBUTING.md.
MIT — see LICENSE.
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