Find a House on Sea Ranch Escape

Purpose

Given user constraints — date range, party size, bedroom count, pet allowance, ocean-view preference, etc. — return one or more Sea Ranch vacation-rental homes from the Sea Ranch Escape catalog (booksearanchescape.escapia.com, an Escapia-powered booking portal) with availability, pricing, amenities, and a deep-link to the unit detail page. Read-only — never click "Book Now" or submit the booking form.

When to Use

• "Find a 3-bedroom house in Sea Ranch for Thanksgiving week 2026, dog-friendly."
• "What's available at The Sea Ranch from July 4–7 for 4 adults?"
• "Cheapest oceanfront 2BR cottage on Sea Ranch under $400/night this fall."
• "List every Sea Ranch Escape property — I'll filter myself."
• A trip-planning agent comparing vacation rentals across coastal Sonoma/Mendocino.

Booking flows (taking payment, holding a slot) are a separate skill — this one stops at the rate-quote / detail page.

Workflow

The Sea Ranch Escape portal exposes four undocumented but stable URL-parameter endpoints. Do not drive the booking form — the form posts to DesktopDefault.aspx with ASP.NET __VIEWSTATE (rotates per session, painful to script). Every piece of data the form exposes is reachable via these direct GET endpoints instead.

1. Enumerate the full catalog (≈30 units across 4 pages)

GET https://booksearanchescape.escapia.com/DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=11977&page_num={1..4}

(Equivalent pretty-URL alias for page 1: /site/PropertyList/11977/default.aspx.)

Each response embeds a <ul id="propertyList"> block with one <li> per unit. Parse each <li> for:

Loop page_num from 1 to 4 (the pager UI also reports <TotalPagesLabel>4</TotalPagesLabel> — read it instead of hardcoding if you want to be safe).

2. Check per-unit availability (JSON, day-by-day)

GET https://booksearanchescape.escapia.com/Unit/Availability/{pid}?startDate=MM/DD/YYYY&endDate=MM/DD/YYYY

Returns application/json — an array of one entry per calendar day from startDate (inclusive) to endDate (inclusive). Entry shape:

{"S": "A", "M": 3}

M is the minimum stay in nights for a booking that starts on (or includes) that day. Common values seen: 3, 5, 7, 255 (encoded "not bookable / no minimum applies because day is U").

Availability rule for a candidate trip with arrive → depart:

1. Day arrive must have S ∈ {"A", "I"}.
2. Every day in (arrive, depart) (exclusive on both ends) must have S == "A".
3. Day depart - 1 (the last night) — covered by rule 2. Day depart itself is the checkout day and need not be A.
4. (depart - arrive) in nights ≥ M[arrive].

If any rule fails, the unit is not bookable for that range.

3. Get the full rate quote (HTML)

GET https://booksearanchescape.escapia.com/Booking/RateDetails/{pid}?arrive=MM/DD/YYYY&depart=MM/DD/YYYY&adults=N&children=N

• HTTP 200 + HTML: parse <dd class="total-price">$X,XXX.XX</dd> for the total. The full breakdown (base rent, fees, taxes, promo savings) lives in a <dl> immediately above it; the booking summary (check-in, check-out, nights, adults, children, pets) is in the same <dl>.
• HTTP 302 → Location: /Error/UnitUnavailable: dates are not bookable for this unit (despite what the calendar might suggest — Escapia rolls min-stay, blackout, and inventory rules into this single check). Treat this as the canonical "unavailable" signal; it is more authoritative than the /Unit/Availability/... JSON alone.

For a robust availability check, hit /Unit/Availability/... first to fail-fast on calendar conflicts, then call /Booking/RateDetails/... to confirm bookability and read the total price.

4. Get rich unit metadata (HTML)

GET https://booksearanchescape.escapia.com/Unit/Details/{pid}

Stable extractable regions:

• <title>The Sea Ranch, CA United States - {name} | Sea Ranch Escape</title>
• <p id="longDescription">…</p> — full marketing description (much richer than the catalog <li> blurb).
• <table id="unitAmenities"> — twelve td.amenity-grouping / td pairs covering Property Type, Unit Code, Beds, Bathrooms, Rooms, Pets, Living, Kitchen, Entertainment, Outdoor, Geographic, Convenience, Children.
• Photo carousel: <img> tags under <ul id="thumbnailCarousel1"> with pictures.escapia.com/SEARES/{pid}/*.jpg.
• Average ratings: regex Manager Rating[^(]*\(Based on (\d+) reviews\) and Rental Rating[^(]*\(Based on (\d+) reviews\).

5. Issue the requests via Browserbase Fetch

Every endpoint above is plain HTTP with no JavaScript dependency. The site sits behind AWS ALB + ASP.NET, not Akamai/Cloudflare/PerimeterX — a bare browse cloud fetch with --proxies is sufficient. No CAPTCHA, no rate-limit observed across ~25 requests in iteration. Stealth + verified-session flags are not required for these endpoints.

browse cloud fetch \
  "https://booksearanchescape.escapia.com/DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=11977&page_num=1" \
  --proxies

Browser fallback

If for some reason the URL endpoints regress (Escapia retires the /Unit/Availability JSON route, etc.), drive the form interactively:

1. browse open https://booksearanchescape.escapia.com/ --remote
2. browse fill #ctl03_ctl06_ctl02_arrive "07/04/2026" and same for _depart.
3. Set #ctl03_ctl06_ctl02_adults and #ctl03_ctl06_ctl02_children via browse fill.
4. browse click #ctl03_ctl06_ctl02_submit — triggers an __doPostBack to DesktopDefault.aspx.
5. Parse the resulting SearchResults page (same <ul id="propertyList"> schema as catalog).
6. Note: Even the form-submit path does not filter results to actually available units — Escapia's SearchResults module shows all matching catalog units; the only authoritative availability gate is /Booking/RateDetails/{pid} returning 200 vs 302.

Site-Specific Gotchas

• GET-param search filters are cosmetic, not functional. /site/SearchResults/default.aspx?arrive=…&depart=…&adults=…&bedrooms=…&pets=… pre-fills the form widgets but returns the same shuffled catalog page regardless of date/party/bedroom values. We verified: a search for arrive=01/01/2020&depart=01/03/2020&adults=30 (impossible) still returned 10 listings; a search with bedrooms=4 returned [3, 1, 3, 2, 3, 3, 1, 4, 2, 2] bedroom counts. Never trust the SearchResults listing as "these units are available for your dates." Use /Unit/Availability/{pid} per unit instead.
• Catalog ordering is randomized per request. Two back-to-back fetches of /site/PropertyList/11977/default.aspx (or /DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=11977&page_num=1) return different 10-unit subsets — the SortingGuid cookie reshuffles per session. To enumerate the full catalog, walk all 4 page_num values; expect overlap. The published total is ~30+ properties but a single 4-page walk may surface ~20-25 unique pids due to shuffle collisions. If completeness matters, repeat the 4-page walk 2-3 times and union the pid sets.
• page_num only works on /DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=11977. On the dated /site/SearchResults/default.aspx path, ?page_num=N is silently ignored — the pager UI shows "Page 1 of 4" for every request because pagination state lives in __VIEWSTATE (POST-only). If you want paginated dated-search results from the browser-fallback path, you must POST with the rotating ViewState — not worth it; just paginate the catalog endpoint and filter availability per-unit.
• /Booking/RateDetails/{pid} redirects on unavailability. A 302 with Location: http://booksearanchescape.escapia.com/Error/UnitUnavailable is the canonical "no" signal. Do NOT follow the redirect (--allow-redirects off — Browserbase Fetch defaults to off, which is what you want). If your client follows the redirect blindly, you'll get the error page HTML and have to detect failure by string-match on "UnitUnavailable" — slower and noisier.
• Date format is US MM/DD/YYYY. ISO 8601 (2026-12-24) on the Availability or RateDetails endpoints returns 500 with parameters dictionary contains a null entry for parameter 'startDate'. The error page leaks the controller signature (Escapia.Portal.Controllers.UnitController.Availability(Int32, DateTime, DateTime)) — useful debug breadcrumb if the path ever changes.
• M: 255 in the Availability JSON is a sentinel, not a real min-stay. It appears on every U (unavailable) day and on days that fall outside the bookable window. Treat any M >= 90 as "ignore min-stay; use the S flag alone."
• Bedrooms: - in the catalog <li> renders as 0 or an em-dash in metadata. Some studio/loft units list a dash. Parse defensively: if the bedroom value is non-numeric, fall back to the detail page's unitAmenities table where "Property Type" usually includes the property classification ("Studio", "Loft", etc.).
• All photo URLs are protocol-relative (//pictures.escapia.com/...). Prefix with https: before storing or rendering.
• The portal-alias subdomain matters. booksearanchescape.escapia.com is the canonical host; the parent www.searanchescape.com is a separate marketing site that redirects/proxies into the same Escapia portal but with different markup. Always use the *.escapia.com host for the endpoints in this skill.
• Read-only stop point. The booking flow continues at /Booking/RateDetails/{pid} → /Booking/Details → /Booking/Payment. Do not POST or click past RateDetails — that creates a tentative reservation in the manager's system.

Expected Output

The skill returns one of three shapes depending on input.

Shape A — Listing query (no dates)

User asked "what houses does Sea Ranch Escape have?" — no date constraint, just discovery.

{
  "success": true,
  "query": {
    "type": "catalog"
  },
  "results": [
    {
      "pid": "38550",
      "name": "Masthead Dunes (TOT ID #2162)",
      "url": "https://booksearanchescape.escapia.com/Unit/Details/38550",
      "price_summary": "Starts @ 3 Nights $2075/ Weekly $3903",
      "bedrooms": 4,
      "bathrooms": 2.0,
      "sleeps": 8,
      "pets": "None",
      "guest_rating": 5,
      "image_url": "https://pictures.escapia.com/SEARES/38550/9883760465.jpg",
      "description": "Unit 28 Lot 96. Exquisite new home located within minutes to tide pools and Walk On Beach…"
    }
  ],
  "total_results": 24,
  "total_pages_walked": 4,
  "note": "Catalog ordering is randomized per request; repeat the page walk to union additional unit IDs."
}

Shape B — Dated availability query

User asked "what's available July 4–7 2026 for 4 adults, dog-friendly?".

{
  "success": true,
  "query": {
    "type": "availability",
    "arrive": "07/04/2026",
    "depart": "07/07/2026",
    "adults": 4,
    "children": 0,
    "pets_required": "Dogs"
  },
  "results": [
    {
      "pid": "116598",
      "name": "Alta Pacifica (TOT #2927N)",
      "url": "https://booksearanchescape.escapia.com/Unit/Details/116598",
      "bedrooms": 3,
      "bathrooms": 3.0,
      "sleeps": 6,
      "pets": "Dogs",
      "available": true,
      "min_stay_nights": 3,
      "total_price_usd": 1247.55,
      "nights": 3,
      "rate_details_url": "https://booksearanchescape.escapia.com/Booking/RateDetails/116598?arrive=07/04/2026&depart=07/07/2026&adults=4&children=0"
    }
  ],
  "candidates_screened": 24,
  "available_count": 1
}

Shape C — No-match outcome

User asked for an impossible/unavailable combination.

{
  "success": true,
  "query": {
    "type": "availability",
    "arrive": "12/24/2026",
    "depart": "12/28/2026",
    "adults": 2,
    "children": 0
  },
  "results": [],
  "candidates_screened": 24,
  "available_count": 0,
  "reason": "all_unavailable",
  "note": "Christmas week — every screened unit returned 302 → /Error/UnitUnavailable from RateDetails, or had U (Unavailable) days in the requested span."
}

Shape D — Unit-detail enrichment (optional)

If the caller requests rich amenities for a returned pid, add this object alongside the listing entry:

{
  "pid": "38550",
  "detail": {
    "long_description": "Unit 28 Lot 96 Ocean Front / HIGHLIGHTS: Hot tub with some views, internet access, gas fireplace, gas BBQ, easy walk to Walk On Beach, children welcome. FLOOR PLAN: Open kitchen, dining and living room…",
    "amenities": {
      "Property Type": "House, 1 story, Built in 2009",
      "Unit Code": "MAST",
      "Beds": "1 king bed, 2 queen beds, 2 twin beds",
      "Bathrooms": "2 bathrooms",
      "Rooms": "Sleeps 8",
      "Pets": "No pets allowed.",
      "Living": "Forced Air Heat, Gas Fireplace, Washer & Dryer, Wireless Internet",
      "Kitchen": "Coffee Maker, Cookware, Dishwasher, Full Kitchen, Gas Oven and Stovetop, Ice Maker, Microwave, Refrigerator, Toaster, Washer/Dryer, Coffee Grinder, Blender",
      "Entertainment": "CD Player, DVD Player, i Pod Dock, Satellite TV, Stereo System, Wireless Internet",
      "Outdoor": "Deck, Gas Grill, Hot Tub",
      "Geographic": "Close to Town, Near Beach",
      "Convenience": "Area FitnessCenter, Golf Course, Nearby Grocery, Nearby Medical Services",
      "Children": "Children allowed"
    },
    "reviews": {
      "manager_count": 6682,
      "unit_count": 100,
      "would_recommend_pct": 99
    },
    "photos": [
      "https://pictures.escapia.com/SEARES/38550/9883760465.jpg",
      "https://pictures.escapia.com/SEARES/38550/6379990312.jpg"
    ]
  }
}