# Build brief — a focused alternative to AirHelp

> **Verdict:** Partly, if you narrow it · **Buildability:** 38/100 · **Category:** Travel
> **Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/airhelp
> Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from AirHelp. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting.

## Context

**AirHelp** — Pursue passenger compensation for delayed, canceled, or overbooked flights. It currently costs Variable pricing.

A useful personal organizer is buildable, but AirHelp is more than the visible intake form. A local app can assess EC261 and UK261 eligibility, organize evidence, draft letters, and track deadlines. It cannot responsibly reproduce AirHelp's managed airline correspondence, cross-jurisdictional legal judgment, funded court action, and professional accountability. This is a credible personal substitute for straightforward self-service claims, not a full replacement.

This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of AirHelp that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest.

## What you are building

Assess EC261 and UK261 eligibility, organize journey facts and evidence, estimate compensation, generate draft letters, and track submission and escalation deadlines locally.

- Build a focused single-user workflow with real persistence, search, and export.
- A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.

## Requirements

### Functional

- Node.js 22.
- Modern browser.
- SQLite.
- User-entered flight, passenger, and evidence data.
- Current official passenger-rights sources.

### Non-functional

- Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support.
- Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle.
- Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down.
- Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it.

## Implementation brief

Build me a local flight-compensation claim organizer to replace AirHelp for self-service claims. Requirements:

- Node 22 + Express + better-sqlite3, server-rendered pages on localhost, no frontend
  framework; all data in one SQLite file plus a local uploads folder.
- Model passengers, bookings, multi-segment journeys, disruptions (delay, cancellation,
  denied boarding, missed connection), claims, evidence files, and deadlines.
- Deterministic EC261 and UK261 eligibility rules in one versioned rules module: given
  the journey facts, output eligible / not eligible / needs manual review, the
  compensation band (250/400/600 EUR distance tiers), and the article relied on.
  Show which facts triggered which rule branch.
- Compute great-circle distance from airport coordinates and timezone-safe arrival
  delay from user-entered flight details; no commercial flight-data API.
- Attach evidence (tickets, emails, receipts) as local files on a chronological
  claim timeline.
- Generate editable draft letters to the airline and the national enforcement body
  from templates; never send anything automatically.
- Track stages (preparing, submitted, escalated to authority or ADR, resolved) with
  due dates, exported as an ICS file for my calendar.
- Export a whole claim as JSON and Markdown so nothing is trapped in the app.
- Say plainly in the UI and README: decision support, not legal advice; verify
  current rules and limitation periods yourself.
- Out of scope: automatic submission, airline negotiation, lawyer engagement, court
  filing, accounts, sync. The staff, legal funding, and accountability are the part
  you cannot build.
- README: setup, where data lives, backup by copying the SQLite file and uploads.

## Delivery standard

- Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code.
- Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data.
- Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations.
- Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states.
- Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data.
- Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details.
- Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey.
- Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations.

## Acceptance criteria

- [ ] A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example.
- [ ] The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable.
- [ ] Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state.
- [ ] The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control.
- [ ] Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures.
- [ ] No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified.

## Non-goals

Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them:

- AirHelp staff handling airline correspondence and negotiation.
- Case-specific legal judgment across jurisdictions.
- Lawyer access and funded legal action under a no-win, no-fee model.
- Commercial flight, weather, and disruption data used to validate claims.
- Compliance, licensing, and legal accountability are core features.
- Trust, audits, and counterparties matter more than feature parity.

## What you still own after launch

- Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.
- Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.
- Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.
- Maintain every third-party integration as APIs and OAuth rules change.

## Risk

**High consequence.** Use this as a prototype or personal aid. Keep a qualified human and an established provider in the loop for consequential decisions.

Editorial confidence in this assessment: high. No independent one-shot implementation is linked yet.

## Prior art

Working open-source software you can read, fork, or borrow from before starting:

- [ClaimSolo](https://github.com/codecube/ClaimSolo) — Open-source, local-first personal workspace for assessing, documenting, and tracking EC261 and UK261 flight claims

---

Generated by [Can It Be Vibe Coded?](https://www.canitbevibecoded.com) · Full report: https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/airhelp