Building an AI-Powered Personal Assistant: Travel Guides, Objective Dining Reviews & Site Automation

endegraaf • ma, 10 aug 2026
🤖 Assistant Labs & Workflows Drupal 11 Personal Assistant Travel Guides Dog-Friendly retro gaming Automation
Building an AI-Powered Personal Assistant: Travel Guides, Objective Dining Reviews & Site Automation
📸 Photo / Image Credit: Illustration: Developer workstation & personal assistant workflow (AI-impression)

🚀 Building an AI-Powered Personal Assistant: Travel Guides, Objective Dining Reviews & Site Automation

A major update documenting the expansion of our personal assistant workspace, custom Drupal theme automation, objective multi-platform restaurant reviews, dog-friendly travel guide standards, and retro gaming setup analyses.


💡 TL;DR



  • Objective Dining Evaluation: Resolved rating discrepancies between TripAdvisor and Google Maps with a 4-pillar score breakdown (Food Quality, Ambiance, Service, Value) and candid Pros/Cons verdicts.

  • Dog-Friendly Travel Badges: Introduced venue status badges (🐶, 🦮, 🚠🐶, 🚫🐶) and local public transit pet rules across all travel guides.

  • Theme & Parser Automation: Made the homepage hero subtitle editable via Drupal Admin (/admin) and updated import-markdown.php to eliminate duplicate cover image stacking on detail pages.

  • Ultimate Travel Guides: Formatted and updated guides for Wildschönau-Niederau, Salzburg, and Innsbruck. Created a local test guide for Zoetermeer to validate dining and landmark evaluation accuracy against personal local living experience.

  • Retro Gaming Articles: Converted existing live blog posts (Node 4 & Node 5) into structured Markdown files for local repository storage, added custom stylized reference illustrations, and re-uploaded them.

  • Workspace Skill Cheat Sheet & Version Control: Documented all 12 active workspace skills and integrated the personal assistant environment with private version control.


🧳 1. Ultimate Travel Guides & Dog-Friendly Standards

Objective Multi-Platform Dining Framework

Evaluating restaurants solely on single-platform aggregate scores often leads to misleading expectations. We implemented a dual-platform evaluation standard:
  • TripAdvisor Rating: Highlights culinary execution, food quality, and service consistency.
  • Google Maps Rating: Reflects foot-traffic volume, location convenience, and overall popularity.
  • 4-Pillar Breakdown: Every dining review evaluates Food Quality, Ambiance, Service, and Value for Money.
  • Category Badges: Categorized into 🏆 Fine Dining, 🍺 Local Favorite, ☕ Scenic View Spot, or 🍨 Historic Coffeehouse.

Dog-Friendly Venue Status & Pet Regulations

Traveling with pets requires quick, unambiguous information regarding venue access:
  • Status Badges: 🐶 Dog-Friendly, 🦮 Outdoor Grounds Only, 🚠🐶 Dog-Friendly Cable Car, and 🚫🐶 No Dogs Allowed.
  • Transit Laws: Integrated pet rules into travel guides, such as mandatory muzzles and short leashes on Austrian ÖBB trains and alpine cable cars, alongside free dog transit on Dutch NS trains and trams.

Destination Guides

  • Wildschönau-Niederau: Alpine hiking, Markbachjoch gondolas, Kundler Klamm gorge, and Tyrolean Gasthofs.
  • Salzburg: Hohensalzburg Fortress, Mirabell Gardens, Getreidegasse, and historic coffeehouses.
  • Innsbruck: Golden Roof, Nordkette Cable Car, Imperial Palace, and Ambras Castle.
  • Zoetermeer (Local Validation Test): Built as an internal benchmark test to validate the quality of the Ultimate Travel Guide workflow and dining ratings against firsthand personal living experience (SnowWorld, Westerpark, Balijbos, and nearby Delft/The Hague).

🎨 2. Drupal Theme & Parser Automation

Editable Site Slogan via Drupal Admin

Updated the gruvbox_cozy theme (gruvbox_cozy.theme & page.html.twig) to render {{ site_slogan }} dynamically. The hero header subtitle can now be updated on the fly via /admin/config/system/site-information without touching theme files.

Eliminating Duplicate Cover Image Stacking

To improve detail page visual layout, we updated the custom markdown importer (import-markdown.php):
  • Automatically detects if the markdown body contains an image matching the frontmatter image: field.
  • Strips duplicate cover image tags from the body text during import so the featured image is rendered once at the top of the node in the hero banner.
  • Fixed regex link parsing to prevent nested brackets in task checkboxes (- [ ]) from colliding with link syntax.

🕹️ 3. Retro Gaming Articles: Markdown Conversion & Illustrations

Rather than writing new retro gaming posts from scratch, we took existing live blog articles and enhanced them:


  • Living Room Retro Setup (Node 4): Converted the existing post into structured Markdown (living-room-retro-gaming-setup.md), generated a custom stylized vector artwork based on personal living room setup photos, and re-uploaded the updated node.

  • Retro Gaming Paradigms (Node 5): Converted the existing post into structured Markdown (retro-gaming-mister-fpga-batocera.md), added a technical graphic comparison (MiSTer FPGA vs Batocera vs Original Hardware), and re-uploaded the updated node.


🛠️ 4. Personal Assistant Skills & Workspace Integration



  • Skill Cheat Sheet: Compiled a comprehensive reference guide ([docs/HOW_TO_USE_PERSONAL_ASSISTANT.md](file:///c:/GIT/personal-assistant/docs/HOW_TO_USE_PERSONAL_ASSISTANT.md)) covering all 12 active workspace skills, trigger phrases, and parameters.

  • Private Repository Integration: Version-controlled all personal assistant skills, documentation, travel guides, and scripts in a private GitHub repository.