Glossary

Travel glossary: trips, maps and location-based alerts

This glossary defines 35 terms that come up when planning a trip and using maps and location-based alerts, from geofence to destination time zone. Each definition first explains what it means in general and then how Kokai uses it, with figures taken from its code and a link to the page that covers it in detail.

Reviewed on September 17, 2026 12 min read

In a nutshell

Terms: 35, sorted by their Spanish name.
How each definition is written: First the general meaning; then how Kokai uses it and with what figures.
Where the figures come from: From the app’s code (radii, times, limits), reviewed on September 17, 2026.
To link to a term: Each one has its own anchor: /glosario/#geovalla, /glosario/#estancia…

How to use this glossary

Terms are sorted by their Spanish name, the one the app uses, and each has its own address so you can link to it or cite it.
When a term has a figure in Kokai (a radius, a time, a limit), the figure is the one in the app’s code on the review date.
The guides with full examples are Planning a trip and Documents for travelling.

Terms

Scope of an interest (ámbito): What a question to the AI is about. In Kokai, an interest has one of three scopes: «Una zona del mapa» (“An area of the map”: a centre and a radius from 100 m to 500 km), «Uno de mis sitios» (“One of my places”) or «Un tema, sin lugar concreto» (“A topic, with no specific place”). Changing the type of scope replaces it entirely. Example in Planning a trip.
AI draft: Something an AI has suggested that nobody has accepted yet. In Kokai, nothing the AI suggests goes into the trip until you accept it: suggested places wait in their interest, and the AI plan stays as «Propuesta de la IA · sin guardar» (“AI suggestion · not saved”), stored only on that device, until you tap «Guardar en el plan» (“Save to the plan”) or discard it. More in Planning a trip.
Web search (AI): A language model’s ability to look things up on the internet while it answers, to give current opening hours, closures or prices instead of the ones it learned. In Kokai you turn it on in Settings with «Buscar en la web al conversar» (“Search the web while chatting”), and it’s used in an interest’s conversation: with Anthropic, up to 5 searches per answer (not on Haiku); with OpenAI, with its search tool. Whatever it looks up is paid for by your key.
Wallet (cartera): In Kokai, the documents that don’t belong to a trip but to you, valid for all of them: passport, ID card, annual insurance, driving licence, vaccines. They’re saved once, shown from every trip and send a reminder 30 days before they expire; a passport also gets one 60 days before a trip if it expires less than 180 days after you’re back. More in Documents for travelling.
API key: A long password an AI provider (Anthropic, OpenAI) gives you to use its models from another application and charge you for what you spend. Kokai doesn’t include AI of its own: it uses yours. The key is stored on your device (on a phone, in the system keychain), goes straight to the provider and never passes through the Kokai server. You have to enter it on each device. More in AI.
Account copy (copia en la cuenta): In Kokai, the copy of your trips on the server so you have them on all your devices: trips, places, plan, accommodation, interests, packing list and document details. It’s on by default, uploads about 2 seconds after each change and checks for updates every minute. It never includes document files, the recorded route, or passports, ID cards and health documents. Turning it off in Settings → «Cuenta» (“Account”) deletes it from the server. More in Your data.
Cooldown: The minimum time between two alerts for the same place, so walking past twice doesn’t bother you twice. In Kokai it’s 45 minutes per place, and it’s saved: it survives closing the app. Example in On the road.
Stay (estancia): A run of nights in the same accommodation. In Kokai it’s a record separate from the hotel’s place: it has check-in and check-out (destination dates), times, status (booked or option), price, the free cancellation deadline and the booking document. That way the same hotel can come up more than once on a trip, and several options can compete for the same nights. More in Accommodation.
Geocoder: A service that turns text (“Belém Tower”, “Rua Augusta 100, Lisboa”) into coordinates, and sometimes the other way round. Kokai uses two, both with OpenStreetMap data: Photon to search for places as you type and Nominatim to place a trip’s destination and the address of a hotel that comes in a PDF.
Geofence: A circle (or other shape) on the map that triggers something when you enter or leave it: an alert, a log entry. iOS and Android have their own, with limits (iOS monitors at most 20 per app). Kokai doesn’t use them: with the trip on the road, it checks each position itself against every place with an alert, with no limit on how many. More in On the road.
Haversine formula: A formula that calculates the shortest distance between two points on a sphere from their latitude and longitude. Kokai uses it with an Earth radius of 6,371 km for alerts, the recorded route and the plan’s journeys: for distances from metres to a few kilometres, its error is far below the GPS’s. More in On the road.
Hysteresis: Using one threshold to enter and a larger one to leave, so a value wobbling at the edge doesn’t keep switching state. In Kokai, you enter a place when you’re within its radius and you don’t count as having left until you’re more than 1.3 times the radius away, allowing for GPS error. With a 150 m radius, you leave from 195 m. More in On the road.
Accommodation gap (hueco): A night of the trip with nothing: no booking, no night in transit, no options. In Kokai it’s marked «Sin alojamiento» (“No accommodation”), and the «Falta alojamiento para…» (“Accommodation missing for…”) warning offers «Añadir alojamiento» (“Add accommodation”), «Añadir una opción» (“Add an option”) or «Es una noche en tránsito» (“It’s a night in transit”); «Buscar en otras webs» (“Search other websites”) opens booking sites with those dates. More in Finding accommodation.
Interest (interés): In Kokai, a saved question about an area, a place or a topic, with its AI conversation and the places it suggests. For an area, the AI suggests 6 places if the radius is up to 2 km, 8 up to 20 km and 10 above that, and accepted ones go onto the map with an approximate location. The size shortcuts are «Un barrio» (“A neighbourhood”, 1 km), «Una ciudad» (“A city”, 8 km), «Una comarca» (“A district”, 40 km) and «Una región» (“A region”, 150 km). More in AI.
llms.txt: A proposal for websites to publish, at /llms.txt, a Markdown index meant to be read by language models. This website publishes one, along with /llms-full.txt (all the text) and each page in Markdown by adding .md to its name, like /glosario.md.
Booking reference (PNR, localizador): The short code of letters and numbers that identifies a booking. For flights it’s also called PNR (Passenger Name Record) or record locator; for hotels and trains, booking or confirmation number. It’s what you’re asked for at a desk. Kokai recognises it in PDFs using labels in seven languages, shows it in a monospaced font so you don’t confuse O with 0, and never sends it to the AI. More in Booking PDFs.
Median: The value in the middle of a sorted list: half the values are below it and half above. Unlike the mean, an extreme value doesn’t drag it along. Kokai compares how close each accommodation option is using the median of its distances to what’s planned for those nights (or to your must-sees), so a 23 km day trip doesn’t make a hotel in the centre look far away. Example in Planning a trip.
On the road mode (En ruta): In Kokai, the state of a trip between «Iniciar el viaje» (“Start the trip”) and «Parar el viaje» (“Stop the trip”): it follows your position, alerts you when you pass near places with an alert and records your route. Only one trip can be on the road at a time. In the browser it works with the tab in front; on Android it will use a foreground service (with its persistent notification, the sign that location is in use) to keep going with the screen off once the app reaches the stores. More in On the road.
Night: The unit of accommodation. A night is named after the date of its evening: a trip from October 3 to 8 has five nights, from the 3rd to the 7th. In Kokai, each night is booked, in transit, with undecided options, empty or with two bookings, and a trip can have up to 120 nights. More in Accommodation.
Nominatim: The OpenStreetMap Foundation’s geocoder. Its usage policy allows at most one request per second and it isn’t meant for search-as-you-type. Kokai uses it to place a trip’s destination (“Lisbon and Sintra”, part by part) and the address of a hotel that comes in a PDF and isn’t on your map, leaving 1.1 seconds between requests.
ODbL: Open Database License, the licence for OpenStreetMap data. It lets you use the data, commercial products included, on two main conditions: credit the source (“OpenStreetMap contributors”, preceded by the copyright symbol) and share any derived databases under the same licence. That’s why the Kokai map always shows the OpenStreetMap and OpenMapTiles attribution.
Option (opción): In Kokai, accommodation saved for some nights without being booked yet: «Una opción, sin reservar todavía» (“An option, not booked yet”). Several options can cover the same nights and are compared by price per night and by the median of their distances. «Elegir esta» (“Choose this one”) makes it booked, and so does reading the booking PDF for that same hotel. More in Planning a trip.
OpenStreetMap: A map of the world made by volunteers and published as open data under the ODbL licence: streets, buildings, shops, paths. It’s the basis of the map, the search and some of the photos in Kokai, which doesn’t use Google Maps. More in Map.
Photon: An open-source geocoder by komoot, with OpenStreetMap data, built for search-as-you-type. Kokai sends it what you type in the map search and the map’s centre, so nearby results come first. Today it uses its public server.
PMTiles: A format that stores all of a map’s tiles in a single file. Whoever reads it requests only the pieces it needs with HTTP range requests, so an ordinary web server is enough, with no map server. Kokai has it ready to serve its own map (and, in future, offline maps by area); today the background map comes from OpenFreeMap.
GPS accuracy: The margin of error, in metres, the system gives with each position: it doesn’t say where you are, but a circle you’re probably in. Among tall buildings it can exceed 50 m. Kokai only alerts you if the accuracy is 50 m or better, or 1.5 times the place’s radius (whichever is larger), and doesn’t record route points with more than 80 m of error. More in On the road.
Alert radius: The distance from a place within which Kokai alerts you. By default it depends on the category: 100 m for food, leisure and practical; 150 m for accommodation and sights; 300 m for nature; 400 m for transport. You change it on the place’s card from 75 to 1,000 m, in steps of 25. More in On the road.
Recorded route (recorrido): The line of where you’ve walked or travelled, recorded with GPS. In Kokai it’s only recorded with the trip on the road: it asks for a position when you move about 15 m, drops points with more than 80 m of error or less than 12 m from the previous one, and stores each point’s longitude, latitude, time and error. It stays on the device: it doesn’t go to your account copy, the AI or the exported file. More in On the road.
Offline: What an app does without data or wifi. In Kokai, trips, the plan, documents with their files, the packing list, PDF reading, reminders, On the road alerts and the recorded route all work offline, because all of that lives on the device. The background map, place search, photos, AI and the account copy need a connection; the copy catches up when the connection returns. More in On the road.
Overlapping bookings (solape): Two accommodation bookings for the same night. Sometimes it’s on purpose (two rooms) and often it’s a mistake that costs a paid night. Kokai marks that night as «Dos reservas» (“Two bookings”) and warns you: «Tienes dos reservas para… Si no es a propósito, cancela una.» (“You have two bookings for… If it isn’t on purpose, cancel one.”) More in Accommodation.
Map tiles: The square pieces a digital map is split into so only the visible area and zoom level are loaded. They can be images or vector tiles (data the device draws). Kokai uses vector tiles with the OpenMapTiles schema and paints them in its own colours, so the map changes with the light, dark or outdoor theme. The map service sees which area you request, not who you are.
Night in transit (tránsito): A night spent travelling: on a night train, a plane or a boat. In Kokai you add it with «Es una noche en tránsito» (“It’s a night in transit”) and it counts as a covered night, so it doesn’t show up as a gap. More in Accommodation.
Approximate location: In Kokai, the mark on a place whose coordinates come from the AI and haven’t been checked: a language model can put a place far from where it really is. The card says so («La ubicación la dio la IA y puede estar desplazada», “The location came from the AI and may be off”) until you drag the marker to the exact spot or tap «Está bien» (“It’s right”).
Wikidata: The Wikimedia Foundation’s free database: everything in the world has an identifier (a Q and a number) with structured data and links. Kokai uses it to find a place’s main photo, its official website, its Wikimedia Commons category and its Wikipedia and Wikivoyage articles, and shows each photo with its author and licence. More in Map.
Destination time zone: The time zone of the place you’re travelling to, with its name from the IANA database (Europe/Lisbon, Asia/Tokyo). In Kokai each trip has its own: plan and booking times are read in local time there, and “today” is the day it is there. Trip dates are stored as local dates (2026-10-03), not as instants, so a clock change doesn’t move any day. Example in Planning a trip.

Sources and references

The original documentation for what is cited here, checked on this page’s review date.

Copyright and License OpenStreetMap Foundation
Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) Open Knowledge Foundation
Nominatim Usage Policy OpenStreetMap Foundation
Photon komoot
PMTiles Protomaps
Wikidata: Introduction Wikimedia Foundation
Time Zone Database IANA
The /llms.txt file llmstxt.org
Geolocation API MDN Web Docs

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