Chatting with Maven

What Maven is

Maven is the companion inside Itineru. It is a conversation, not a search box. You can ask it for ideas, ask it to build you something, or ask it about your own trips and itineraries.

It is called Maven. If you have used Itineru for a while, you may remember it being called Mia. It is the same companion, with a new name.

Opening it

• Tap the small floating Maven button, which is available almost everywhere in the app.
• Or tap Maven in the middle of the plus menu.

The conversation

Type at the bottom and press send. Maven replies as it thinks, so you see the answer arriving rather than waiting for a blank screen. If it is going the wrong way, you can stop it mid-answer.

Sometimes Maven will offer you buttons instead of asking you to type: a list to choose one thing from, a list to choose several, a set of dates, or a few short questions at once. Tap your answers and it carries on.

The menu icon at the top left of the chat opens your past conversations. The pencil icon starts a new one.

What Maven can do for you

Maven does not just explain things. When it can do the thing itself, it offers to.

• Build you an itinerary. Ask for a day in Rome and it will offer to make one.
• Build you a road trip.
• Run a Quick Find for places near you, or near somewhere you name.
• Create a trip to keep your plans in.

When Maven offers to do one of these, you say yes and it gets on with it. The result lands in the app exactly as if you had built it from the Generate menu.

What Maven knows about you

Maven can look things up in your own account when you ask about them. It can:

• list your trips, and tell you about a particular one,
• list your itineraries, and tell you about a particular one,
• tell you the expenses on a trip,
• list your saved places,
• list the countries you have visited.

So "what have I got planned for Lisbon" and "how much have we spent so far" are fair questions.

Maven reads only your own data. It cannot see anyone else's.

What Maven knows about right now

Maven knows the current weather where you are, and it knows your local time. So "is it a good afternoon to walk" is a question it can actually answer, rather than guess at.

While you are on an itinerary

If you have started an itinerary and you are out walking or driving it, Maven can find places along the route you are actually on. Ask it for a coffee stop, or somewhere for lunch, and it looks along your route rather than in a circle around a pin.

See Doing an itinerary for how to start one.

Asking about a particular itinerary

If you open Maven while you are looking at an itinerary, it attaches that itinerary to the conversation automatically. You will see a chip at the top of the chat that says "Asking about", followed by the name.

If you would rather talk about something else, tap the cross on the chip and it lets go.

What Maven will not do

• It will not give you a safety rating or a travel advisory. That is not the companion's job.
• It will not make things up about the app. If the help documentation does not cover something, Maven will tell you it is not sure rather than inventing an instruction.
• It cannot see other people's accounts, trips or expenses.

If Maven gets it wrong

Maven is an AI, and it can be wrong. Check anything that matters: opening times, prices, whether a place still exists. Itineru gives you the plan. The world is still the world.