Adapted from the DGF Agent Basics series — consumer-first guides for working with a personal AI agent. Pick only what you need.
> Pick only what you need. This skill is individual. This is one person's thoughts, offered as a pre-configured help, not a must. Take only the value you need from it, prune it to what fits you, and leave the rest. You do not have to use what the author thinks, and you do not have to take any other skill with it.
Summary: Find and compare hotels, Airbnb, Vrbo, and other stays, by full-stay total, with the property's own site direct last and always. Hands you a booking route to review and pay yourself. Optional.
Use this skill when the user wants to find and compare a place to stay: hotels, Airbnb, vacation rentals, and any other stay. It covers stays only. If the user asks for something outside stays, handle that as a separate task, without assuming another skill exists.
This skill stands alone. An agent that knows nothing else can follow it from the startup sequence below, then the stays method. This skill works on its own, with no other skill needed, and no knowledge of any other skill assumed.
Startup and how to use
Start by getting your own personal agent. Get your own personal agent and set it up. Bring your own accounts and logins. Use nothing that belongs to anyone else.
Tell your agent what you care about in plain words. Name your business, your work, your family, your hobbies, or any topic you want it to follow. Talking is the setup. You do not have to set up a system first.
Ask for the plan first, before any work runs. Say the task, then ask for the exact steps it will take, what it needs from you, and anything it cannot do. Wait for you to approve or correct the plan. Review the plan like a checklist and fix a wrong step or add a missing step before work starts.
Check that your agent understood you, before it runs. Ask it to show back what it thinks you mean and what output it will give you. Correct its repeat back right there when it does not match what you pictured.
Work in small single steps. Count the steps first. Give one step, check it, then give the next step. A ten step run is a huge run for an agent, so break it down and keep each step to exactly one thing.
Show it once, then save it by name. This is how you create a new task or a new skill. Take over the browser and do the task once yourself while your agent pauses. You drive alone and your agent does not watch your clicks. There is no record button to press. After you hand control back, tell your agent the steps in chat and tell it to save them by name, such as save this as Fun Things. Later, say pull up Fun Things and it picks up where you left off.
Correct it in small plain words when it does it wrong. Do not start over. Say what to change and say to remember that correction. That preference sticks and it gets better for you specifically over time.
Let it keep learning your interests every day. Your Feed looks like a newspaper with articles and topics related to what you told it you care about, updated daily. Your Ideas look like a lightbulb with suggestions for things you might like. It is not mind reading. It learns from what you actually talk about.
Use easy first and deep only when you want it. Never require a deep setup to use a basic task. Keep the wording in plain benefits and do not lead with virtual machine or VM. Say it has its own browser and workspace built in, you do not have to set anything up, it keeps your logins safe, and it saves and remembers your stuff.
Before any search
Read the request and list every fact that decides whether a result is correct. Do not search until those facts are known or the user has said to search without them.
Ask the user for the missing deciding facts in one plain message. Ask at most three short questions at a time.
Never ask for a password or a card number in chat. Tell the user to load logins through the secure sign-in your agent shows them. If a login was not loaded securely, search public prices only and do not look inside that account.
Never spend the user's money. Finding a stay and showing a total are not a booking. The user reviews and pays themselves.
Travel stays: hotels, Airbnb, and every other stay
Collect the stay facts first. Ask for destination, check in and check out dates, number of rooms, who sleeps in each room with every child's exact age, guest count, bed and room type, budget ceiling, location needs, accessibility needs, and what must be true for the stay to work, such as a kitchen, parking, breakfast, or a pool.
Ask about dates and flexibility in plain words, the same way as flights. Ask what dates are fixed, how many days they can shift, how much saving would justify a shift or a different area, and whether they need a rate they can cancel or change.
Treat refundable, prepaid, and pay at property rates as different products, even at the same hotel for the same nights. State the trade in one sentence when you present options, such as the cheaper rate cannot be cancelled while the dearer rate can be cancelled free until a stated date.
Search every source for the same stay before deciding. Use a full stay search through your agent, Google Hotels for comparing sellers for the same property, Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda, and Trip.com, and the property's own site direct for the final price, room details, and cancellation terms. Add a rental platform when a kitchen, a group, or a long stay makes one useful, such as Airbnb and Vrbo, plus local booking sites and regional chains for the destination, which often have stock the global sites lack.
Check the property's own site direct last and always, the same way as airline sites for flights. A direct rate, a member rate, or a room type that only the property sells will not appear on an aggregator.
Ask what memberships, subscriptions, and loyalty programs the user already holds. Ask about hotel loyalty, AAA, AARP, Costco Travel, and points or free night certificates. Compare cash, points, and cash and earn for the same stay, and count breakfast, parking, or flexibility as a benefit only when the traveler will actually use it.
Test a promo code in the basket before counting it. A headline code counts only when it works at checkout.
Compare the full stay total for the top two or three options. Include nightly rate, taxes, mandatory fees, cleaning fees on rentals, parking, and any resort fee, for the whole stay, not per night alone. Include location, cancellation terms, check in and check out times, and transport cost to what the user came for. A cheaper stay far from the destination can cost more overall.
Verify any amenity or access feature that decides the choice on the property's own site or details. A property description does not establish what a particular room includes, and a star class is separate from guest ratings. Read recent reviews for noise, crowds, or accessibility when they matter, while relying on the property itself for current hours and terms.
Present the decision as a trade, not as a pick made for the user. If the price is not right, book a refundable rate when available and recheck the price before the cancellation deadline, or watch it, and rebook only with the user's approval when it drops.
Present flights and stays together when the user is planning a whole trip and asks for both. Show the flight total, the stay total, and the combined trip total, with the same dates, guests, and cancellation terms on both sides, so the trip is compared as a whole, not as two separate guesses.
Categories that enhance stays
Stay types: hotel, resort, motel, bed and breakfast, hostel, cabin, apartment rental, and whole house rental are different products, even in the same area. State what is included, what is private, and what is shared, for each type.
Room and property categories: standard room, suite, studio, one bedroom, two bedroom, and whole house differ in beds, kitchen, laundry, and workspace. Check bed count, bed type, and room occupancy against the party, before presenting an option.
Amenities: pool, gym, breakfast, parking, wifi, workspace, laundry, kitchen, air conditioning, and elevator access each decide a stay for different travellers. Check each amenity that matters to the user on the property's own details, not just on a listing summary.
Location categories: city centre, beachfront, near the event, near transport, quiet area, and family area are different trade offs. Show distance and transport cost to what the user came for, and state noise, safety, and walkability in plain words when reviews support it.
Cancellation and payment categories: refundable, non refundable, prepaid, pay at property, deposit required, and free cancellation until a stated date are different offers. State the deadline, the penalty, and when payment is taken, for each option.
Host versus hotel: a rental host, a property manager, and a hotel front desk have different check in, cleaning, support, and cancellation practices. State who the user deals with, how check in works, and what happens if something goes wrong.
Cleaning and fees: cleaning fees, service fees, resort fees, taxes, and damage deposits are part of the full stay total, not extras to discover at checkout. List each fee separately, then the full stay total.
Group, family, and long stay: check group rates, room blocks, family rooms, cribs, and long stay discounts when the party is large or the stay is long. Ask the property directly about a better rate for a long stay or a group, when that applies.
Pets, accessibility, and work: check pet fees and pet rules, step free access, accessible bathrooms, and workspace with reliable wifi, when any of these apply. Verify them on the property's own details, not on a summary.
Safety and reviews: check recent reviews for cleanliness, safety, noise, and host responsiveness, and check whether the property is licensed or registered where the area requires it. A high average with recent complaints about cleanliness or safety is a warning, not a detail to skip.
Hand over the deliverable: cart set, user just pays
At the end, hand the user a finished booking route, not just a summary. The user should be able to go from your message to paying, with no searching left to do.
Hand it over in one of two ways, whichever fits the seller. First, through the your agent browser: prepare the browser task with the chosen property, dates, rooms, guests, and rate selected, booking page loaded, and hand control to the user in browser takeover, so they review and pay themselves. Second, with the exact URL: give the exact booking or checkout link for the chosen stay, verified to open to that property, dates, rooms, guests, and rate, not a generic search page.
Before handing it over, check the booking page against the decisions made. Check property, dates, rooms, guests, rate type, cancellation terms, and full stay total, line by line. If anything differs from what the user decided, fix it before handing it over, and say what changed.
State plainly what is set and what is not set. State when the booking is set and ready to pay, when a link is a search result that still needs the user to pick a rate, and when a seller has no booking link and the user must add the stay themselves, with exact steps. Never claim a booking is set when it is not.
Your agent never pays. The user reviews the booking page, enters payment themselves, and places the order themselves. Handing over a ready booking is not placing an order.
Diverse, not concrete: let the user prune
Do not make this skill concrete, narrow, or one size fits all. Present a diverse set of options first, across price, style, risk, format, and approach, so different people can see themselves in it.
Let the user prune. Ask what to cut, what to keep, and what to change, and then narrow to what they kept. Pruning is the user's job, not your agent's guess. Do not prune for them before they have seen the options.
Do not lock a single choice early. Offer at least two or three meaningfully different options at each decision point, with the trade for each, unless the user already locked that choice themselves.
Keep options that do not fit one person, because they may fit another person using the same skill. A skill that only works for one kind of person is too concrete to reuse.
When the user prunes, save the pruned version by name when they want to repeat it, so their version starts from what they kept, not from the full diverse set again.
Present the result
Lead with the recommendation or the trade, in plain words. Keep the reply short and name only the decisive difference between the top choices.
State every price as a full stay total when a total decides the choice. Include taxes and fees when they are known, and say when a fee is unknown instead of guessing it.
State what you could not verify. State when a price is stale, a property was blocked, a membership was not loaded, or an amenity is provisional.
Stop after a denial. Do not re-pitch a rejected option in new words.
Available connectors
[Places Search](/opt/hatch/connectors/places/CONNECTOR.md) for a property's exact location, coordinates, and ratings.
Use your agent's connector and skill search, if it has one, to find other connectors and related skills.
If nothing here fits, look on the web for a maintained API or MCP server and set it up with your agent's custom connector setup, if it has one, or build a custom connector.
Websites
[Google Hotels](https://www.google.com/travel/hotels) for comparing sellers for the same property. Carry the exact dates, rooms, and cancellation terms into the search and verify the final price on the property's own site.
[Booking.com](https://www.booking.com/) for wide hotel coverage, especially in Europe.
[Expedia](https://www.expedia.com/) for hotels, packages, and changes and cancellations.
[Airbnb](https://www.airbnb.com/) and [Vrbo](https://www.vrbo.com/) for rentals, from apartments to whole houses.
[Agoda](https://www.agoda.com/) and [Trip.com](https://www.trip.com/) for stays across Asia and beyond.
Alternatives for better results
Book a refundable rate and recheck the price before the cancellation deadline, rebooking only with the user's approval when it drops.
Use member rates, loyalty benefits, points, and free night certificates the user has.
Compare door to door travel time and transport costs. A cheaper stay far from what the user came for can cost more overall.
For a long stay or a group, ask the hotel directly about a better rate or room block.