trips-app

Tracks flights and groups them into trips, with a CLI and an MCP server on top of a shared repository layer. Runs against its own isolated Postgres instance (Docker) — does not touch any pre-existing travel schema/database.

Stack

• Node.js + TypeScript (ESM)

• pg (node-postgres) for DB access

• node-pg-migrate for git-committed schema migrations

• commander for the CLI

• @modelcontextprotocol/sdk for the MCP server (stdio transport)

• zod for input validation

• vitest for tests

Related MCP server: trip-planner-mcp

Database

This app owns a dedicated Postgres instance, started via Docker:

docker compose up -d

This starts a postgres:16-alpine container (trips-postgres) on port 5433, with a persistent named volume trips_pgdata. Schema/tables live under the trips schema inside a database also named trips — fully separate from any other database/schema on the host or in other containers.

Copy .env.example to .env and adjust DATABASE_URL if needed. If running the app from another container on the same Docker host, put both containers on a shared user-defined network (e.g. docker network create trips-net, then docker network connect trips-net <container> for both) so the hostname trips-postgres resolves via Docker's embedded DNS.

Setup

docker compose up -d postgres
docker compose run --rm migrate

Migrations

Migrations live in migrations/ and are committed to git. node-pg-migrate config is in .node-pg-migraterc.json (targets the trips schema for both the migrated objects and the pgmigrations bookkeeping table's search path via PGSCHEMA).

Migrations run inside a container (migrate service, profile tools), built from the same image as app/mcp, connecting to the postgres service over the shared trips-net network — no host Node/npx required:

docker compose run --rm migrate                    # apply all pending migrations (up)
docker compose run --rm migrate down                # roll back the most recent migration
docker compose run --rm migrate create <name>       # scaffold a new migration

Current migrations:

1. 1700000000001_create-trips.cjs — creates the trips schema and trips.trips table.

2. 1700000000002_create-flights.cjs — creates trips.flights (with trip_id FK, a status CHECK constraint restricting to confirmed | not_flown | cancelled | completed, and indexes on trip_id, status, departure_datetime).

CLI

npm run cli -- trip create --name "Europe Spring 2026" --start 2026-03-18 --end 2026-05-29
npm run cli -- trip list
npm run cli -- trip show 1

npm run cli -- flight add --number UA70 --from EWR --to AMS \
  --departure 2026-03-18T18:35:00Z --airline "United Airlines" \
  --booking-ref H59RC5 --trip 1

npm run cli -- flight list
npm run cli -- flight list --status not_flown
npm run cli -- flight assign <flightId> <tripId>
npm run cli -- flight mark-not-flown <flightId>
npm run cli -- flight mark-flown <flightId>
npm run cli -- flight delete <flightId>

MCP Server

npm run build
node dist/mcp/server.js

Or for local development without building: npm run mcp (runs via tsx).

Registering with Hermes (containerized, project convention)

Per project convention this MCP server must run inside its container (via docker compose run), not as a bare host node process. Register it with the Hermes CLI:

hermes mcp add trips-flights --command docker --args \
  compose -f /mnt/appdata/hermes/repos/trips-app/docker-compose.yml run --rm -T mcp

Notes:

• --args takes space-separated tokens (NOT a single comma/space-joined string) — Hermes execs command directly without a shell, so --command "docker compose ... run --rm mcp" as one string will fail with "Connection closed". Split it: command: docker, and put the rest in --args.

• The -T flag on docker compose run disables pseudo-TTY allocation, required for stdio-based MCP transport to work over the piped stdin/stdout.

• Verify with hermes mcp test trips-flights and hermes mcp list.

• Start a new Hermes session (/reset) after registering for the tools to become available.

Exposed tools: list_trips, get_trip, create_trip, list_flights, create_flight, assign_flight_to_trip, mark_flight_not_flown, mark_flight_flown, delete_flight.

Seed Data

migrations/seed_real_data.sql re-creates the real trips/flights from the original data (5 trips, 20 flights, including the 3 genuinely not_flown bookings). It's a plain SQL script, not a node-pg-migrate migration — running it truncates and reinserts, so it's idempotent but destructive to any other data you've added by hand.

docker cp migrations/seed_real_data.sql trips-postgres:/tmp/seed_real_data.sql
docker exec trips-postgres psql -U trips -d trips -f /tmp/seed_real_data.sql

Tests

Locally (against the containerized Postgres on localhost:5433):

npm test

Or fully inside a container (no host Node/npx needed), connected to the postgres service over the shared trips-net network:

docker compose run --rm test

This builds the test target of the Dockerfile (same base image as app/mcp, plus tests/ and dev dependencies) and runs npm test (vitest run) inside the container.