Trip Escrow

The idea came from my longtime manager at Google Wallet, who mentioned that he and his boyfriend liked to surprise each other by secretly planning trips to different places. I loved it, and wanted to do the same with my wife: our birthdays are about two months apart, so we could each plan a getaway for the other — with one rule, that we don’t both pick the same destination.

Trip Escrow is the neutral middle that makes that work. One partner secretly locks in a destination — Gemini validates that it’s a real, unambiguous place — while the other submits three options of their own. The app then uses Gemini to choose the option most geographically distinct from the hidden pick, so you both end up somewhere genuinely new, with the surprise intact until the reveal. Once a choice is made the session locks, so no one can peek or change their answer.

The concept started as a prototype in Google AI Studio. From there I used Claude to rework the code to run on Google Cloud Run, with Firebase as the database. The front end is React with an Express API, and Gemini handles both the location validation and the final selection.

More than the trip planning, I think the underlying pattern is the interesting part: using an LLM as a trusted escrow agent — something that holds a secret and acts on it fairly without leaking it to either side. As agents grow more secure and more trusted, I expect that opportunity to keep growing.