30-year hotel veteran ships transactional MCP server for real trip bookings
autonomad_ai · reddit · 2026-10-29
After 30 years in hotels, the author built AUTONOMAD, a licensed travel seller with a remote MCP server (mcp.autonomad.ai/mcp) listed in Claude's connector directory and published in ChatGPT, booking real flights, hotels, and tours. Lessons for transactional MCP servers:
- Sessions: the server ended sessions 30 minutes after start (not idle), and deploys wiped them; re-opening sessions using identity only from the request's bearer token sharply cut errors logged by Claude's proxy.
- Unknown isn't zero: return "unavailable" when a supplier is unreachable — agents treat [] as "none exist".
- Don't let the model pay in chat: the assistant searches and returns one link; payment happens on the site, with changes/cancellations going through preview→confirm.
- Bots: an anonymous client looped past-date searches all month; validating dates before hitting suppliers saved real money.
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