FareHarbor

Booking, availability and payment software for tour, activity and rental operators, with distribution out to the big OTAs.

KINDA · partial replacement
price variesestimated build time a weekendreplaced by 0 people

The part everyone thinks they are paying for, a calendar with capacity, a checkout, and a manifest the guides can read, is genuinely a weekend build with Stripe doing the hard money parts. The part that is actually load-bearing is everything after that: pushing live availability to Viator, GetYourGuide, Expedia and Booking.com, reconciling reseller commissions, handling refunds and chargebacks on other people's money, and a phone line that answers at 6am when the 7am kayak trip is double-booked. A self-hosted build replaces direct-website bookings cleanly and replaces channel distribution not at all. If most of your volume is direct and you can eat the ops burden, the maths gets interesting fast. If OTAs feed you, you are rebuilding a channel manager, which is not a weekend.

Build verification: not recorded. How we judge buildability

What you give up

  • OTA and reseller distribution: live availability pushed to Viator, GetYourGuide, Expedia and dozens of local agents, plus the commission accounting behind it
  • Someone else owning payment risk: chargebacks, disputes, refund flows, payout timing, PCI scope and multi-currency
  • 24/7 human support during a season where a broken booking page costs real departures that day
  • The messy operational features you only miss in August: resource and guide assignment, gear allocation, multi-day and multi-activity itineraries, gift cards, promo codes, waivers, group and private bookings
  • Mobile check-in that works on a beach with one bar of signal, and the reporting your accountant already knows how to read

Why people still pay

Because the fee is usually charged to the traveler, not the operator, so it never shows up as a line item on the operator's P&L the way a subscription would, and because the alternative to a channel manager is manually keeping availability in sync across five OTAs while running trips. Operators also pay for the absence of liability: when a card is disputed or a payout is late, that is not their engineering problem. A DIY build is a real option for a direct-sales operator with a stable product catalogue and someone technical on the team, and it is a bad option for anyone whose seats are filled by resellers.

Your build guide

The stack, security requirements, and agent rules for a focused replacement.

Before you start

  • Runtime and tools: TypeScript, React, Node, PostgreSQL and hosted Stripe Checkout for one tour operator.
  • Before starting: A PostgreSQL database, departure/capacity examples, the operator timezone, a Stripe sandbox account with webhook setup and an authenticated staff role.
01
TypeScript, React, Node, PostgreSQL and hosted Stripe Checkout for one tour operator
02
Data design: Store Tour, Departure, CapacityHold, Booking, Passenger and PaymentReceipt; active holds plus confirmed seats may never exceed capacity, and payment identity is deduplicated.
03
Setup: A PostgreSQL database, departure/capacity examples, the operator timezone, a Stripe sandbox account with webhook setup and an authenticated staff role
engineering roadmap

Implementation plan

1

Phase 1

Pin the working slice and create its example input: Define tour departures with seat capacity, hold seats during checkout and provide staff with a check-in manifest and explicit cancellation/refund states. Confirm setup: A PostgreSQL database, departure/capacity examples, the operator timezone, a Stripe sandbox account with webhook setup and an authenticated staff role.

2

Phase 2

Implement persistence and write-time invariants before decorating the UI: Store Tour, Departure, CapacityHold, Booking, Passenger and PaymentReceipt; active holds plus confirmed seats may never exceed capacity, and payment identity is deduplicated.

3

Phase 3

Connect the working view to real saved state. Use transactional capacity holds against dated departures, not personal calendar free/busy. Store verified payment events and reconcile late/failed payments; confirmation requires capacity and payment state to agree.

4

Phase 4

Expose the app-specific limits and recovery path in context: Payment integration needs current provider webhook rules and a refund policy. Do not treat browser redirects as proof of payment or electronic waiver capture as legal enforceability.

5

Phase 5

Walk through this concrete acceptance case and preserve its exported evidence: Two parties request the last two seats while a hold expires and payment arrives late; reconcile the payment without overselling and surface any required refund decision. Finish the README and backup/restore instructions; report unfinished capabilities explicitly.

the pro prompt
download AGENTS.md
Build the following focused alternative to FareHarbor. This is a deliberately limited personal or small-team substitute, not parity with the paid service.

WORKING SLICE
Define tour departures with seat capacity, hold seats during checkout and provide staff with a check-in manifest and explicit cancellation/refund states.

SETUP AND ARCHITECTURE
Use TypeScript, React, Node, PostgreSQL and hosted Stripe Checkout for one tour operator. Prerequisites: A PostgreSQL database, departure/capacity examples, the operator timezone, a Stripe sandbox account with webhook setup and an authenticated staff role. Before integrating anything, record actual versions and permissions, plus model files or provider limits only where used, in the README; make unavailable dependencies visible rather than simulating success.

DOMAIN MODEL AND INVARIANTS
Store Tour, Departure, CapacityHold, Booking, Passenger and PaymentReceipt; active holds plus confirmed seats may never exceed capacity, and payment identity is deduplicated.

IMPLEMENTATION CONTRACT
Use transactional capacity holds against dated departures, not personal calendar free/busy. Store verified payment events and reconcile late/failed payments; confirmation requires capacity and payment state to agree. Provide an input/setup view, the main work view, and a review/export view appropriate to this workflow. Preserve the last saved state if a job or save fails. Include empty, loading, permission-denied, partial and retryable-error states. Log identifiers and error categories without secret values or unnecessary private content.

APP-SPECIFIC BOUNDARY AND RECOVERY
Payment integration needs current provider webhook rules and a refund policy. Do not treat browser redirects as proof of payment or electronic waiver capture as legal enforceability.

ACCEPTANCE SCENARIO
Two parties request the last two seats while a hold expires and payment arrives late; reconcile the payment without overselling and surface any required refund decision. Also reopen the app after an interrupted operation, confirm the saved record/export remains inspectable, and document the recovery action. These are implementation acceptance requirements, not a claim that this guide has been tested.

DELIVERY
Deliver a runnable repository with migrations or project-format versioning, a non-sensitive example, environment/permission setup, the exact manual acceptance steps, and a backup/export-and-restore walkthrough. Implement the working slice before optional integrations; list any deferred paid-product capabilities honestly. Do not add capabilities outside the working slice just to resemble the original product.

PROJECT RULES FOR AGENTS.md
Keep the domain invariants above executable at the write boundary. Propose scope changes before adding providers or permissions. Never fabricate source evidence, publish results, identity matches or successful delivery. Preserve user originals and require an explicit confirmation for destructive changes or external publication.

$ open in your agent (prompt prefilled, you press enter), copy the prompt or copy or download AGENTS.md

prior art · use these instead of building, if you'd rather

No prior-art project is listed yet. Compare the scoped build with the paid product before choosing.

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Questions about FareHarbor

Can you build your own FareHarbor with AI?

Partly. The part everyone thinks they are paying for, a calendar with capacity, a checkout, and a manifest the guides can read, is genuinely a weekend build with Stripe doing the hard money parts. The part that is actually load-bearing is everything after that: pushing live availability to Viator, GetYourGuide, Expedia and Booking.com, reconciling reseller commissions, handling refunds and chargebacks on other people's money, and a phone line that answers at 6am when the 7am kayak trip is double-booked. A self-hosted build replaces direct-website bookings cleanly and replaces channel distribution not at all. If most of your volume is direct and you can eat the ops burden, the maths gets interesting fast. If OTAs feed you, you are rebuilding a channel manager, which is not a weekend.

What does the FareHarbor build prompt cover?

The prompt starts with this scope: Define tour departures with seat capacity, hold seats during checkout and provide staff with a check-in manifest and explicit cancellation/refund states. Full-product capabilities excluded from the comparison include: OTA and reseller distribution: live availability pushed to Viator, GetYourGuide, Expedia and dozens of local agents, plus the commission accounting behind it; Someone else owning payment risk: chargebacks, disputes, refund flows, payout timing, PCI scope and multi-currency; 24/7 human support during a season where a broken booking page costs real departures that day. Follow the implementation plan and its prerequisites before expanding the build.

How do I use the prompt, AGENTS.md and agent skills?

Start with the FareHarbor prerequisites and stack, then copy the prompt into your coding agent. Save the project rules as AGENTS.md in the project root. Linked skills are optional packages or source instructions for specific tasks; review their current contents and install only those matching the chosen stack. A skill does not supply API credentials or verify the finished app.

How long will this FareHarbor project take?

The catalogue estimate is a weekend for the limited scope. Setup, integration approvals, debugging, deployment and ongoing maintenance can add time. This is an estimate, not a delivery guarantee.

What would I give up by replacing FareHarbor?

OTA and reseller distribution: live availability pushed to Viator, GetYourGuide, Expedia and dozens of local agents, plus the commission accounting behind it; Someone else owning payment risk: chargebacks, disputes, refund flows, payout timing, PCI scope and multi-currency; 24/7 human support during a season where a broken booking page costs real departures that day; The messy operational features you only miss in August: resource and guide assignment, gear allocation, multi-day and multi-activity itineraries, gift cards, promo codes, waivers, group and private bookings; Mobile check-in that works on a beach with one bar of signal, and the reporting your accountant already knows how to read. Because the fee is usually charged to the traveler, not the operator, so it never shows up as a line item on the operator's P&L the way a subscription would, and because the alternative to a channel manager is manually keeping availability in sync across five OTAs while running trips. Operators also pay for the absence of liability: when a card is disputed or a payout is late, that is not their engineering problem. A DIY build is a real option for a direct-sales operator with a stable product catalogue and someone technical on the team, and it is a bad option for anyone whose seats are filled by resellers.

What can I use instead of building FareHarbor?

No alternative is listed in this entry yet. That is a gap in this catalogue, not proof that no suitable product exists. Compare the paid product and the proposed scope before committing to a build.

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