Mercadona has made a significant leap in integrating artificial intelligence into its digital platform. The company has replaced the search system of its online supermarket, which had been managed by an external provider for eight years, with an internally developed AI solution. This new search engine not only optimizes the user experience but also considerably reduces operational costs. The project leader is José Ramón Pérez Agüera, the technology director of Mercadona Tech, who managed to establish the foundation of the new system in just three days, using Claude Code, the programming assistant from Anthropic, as he shared on LinkedIn. What was traditionally considered a complex development, estimated to take several months with a full team of engineers, materialized over a single long weekend. “I’m going to be very honest, and I know this will sound cheap, but it’s the truth. 70% of the work (implementing the search engine, improving search quality, and laying the groundwork) took three days. One weekend plus an extended Monday,” Pérez Agüera explained in an interview with Xataka. The search engine is key for Mercadona: nearly a third of the products added to the cart come from customer searches. Until now, this function depended on an external provider, with costs increasing based on usage. With the new tool, Mercadona has improved the quality of results by 85%, reduced unanswered searches to almost zero, and decreased monthly costs from between $9,000 and $15,000 to less than $900, representing savings of over 90%. Artificial intelligence allowed for accelerated experimentation, analysis of large volumes of data, and testing of multiple configurations in just a few hours. However, strategic decisions remained in the hands of the human team. Pérez Agüera and his team defined the final architecture, selected the most suitable technologies, and adapted the system to the company’s internal standards. The complete development, from the first version to deployment, was completed in about a month with a small team. Beyond the savings and technical improvement, this project demonstrates a transformation in the sector: AI does not replace expert judgment but enhances professionals' ability to create and deploy complex solutions in much less time. (Source: as.com)