Carlos Ospina Builds AI-Powered Recipe Site with Drupal to Celebrate 25th Anniversary

Published on January 15, 2026, the project was born out of a personal challenge: how to build something meaningful that highlights what Drupal is capable of today. Ospina and his partner Anilu had several family recipe PDFs, two Colombian ones from his side, and five or six Costa Rican recipes from hers. They were scattered, hard to read, and impossible to search, especially for their mothers, both over 75 years old. Inspired by Drupal’s 25th milestone, Carlos built them a real site they could actually use.

The result was laollita.es, a public, searchable, and multilingual recipe site. It includes content in Spanish, English, and Italian. Users can search by recipe name, filter by country or region, and browse recipes through a clean, accessible interface designed for ease of use, even for those not familiar with digital tools.

Carlos began by leveraging the Umami demo that comes bundled with Drupal. The demo provided a ready-made Recipe content type and theme structure, allowing him to skip repetitive groundwork and focus on the real challenge: content extraction, translation, and UX optimisation. He dubbed this approach “starting with something real” — a validation of how effective Drupal’s Recipes and starter kits can be today.

AI as Development Partner

The build was powered by Claude AI, affectionately referred to as "Claudito," which acted as Ospina’s AI assistant throughout the project. Claude helped with:

• Analysing large PDFs and extracting recipe content
• Performing AI-assisted translations and converting outputs into JSON
• Creating and refining custom migrate plugins for content and translation import
• Building Views with filters and search facets
• Fixing CSS and improving frontend UX
• Creating utilities for detecting and bulk-translating missing content

While AI handled much of the repetitive work, Ospina stepped in to ensure code quality and maintainability. He redirected Claude when it suggested unnecessary custom modules or incorrect approaches, guiding it instead toward using core themes or existing modules. He emphasised a human-in-the-loop workflow, where the developer remains the decision-maker while AI accelerates implementation.

To handle multilingual needs, Carlos created a special migration plugin just for translations and used Views to identify untranslated content. This setup will support ongoing content growth, allowing their families to add new recipes in any language and bulk-translate as needed.

A Functional Tribute to Drupal’s Progress

The project demonstrates Drupal's ability to integrate AI practically while supporting real-world content and user needs. It also showcases how the platform has become more accessible over the years, a point Carlos highlights by noting that even without using Drupal CMS or Canvas, the build was fast and effective.

“The learning curve is flattening,” he wrote, emphasising that Drupal’s Recipes, combined with AI and a thoughtful approach, make site-building dramatically more efficient. Ospina encouraged others to explore what’s now possible with Drupal, urging them to build something meaningful and see how far the platform has come.

laollita.es stands as both a gift for family and a showcase of Drupal's maturity, a reminder that after 25 years, the platform remains powerful, flexible, and ready for the next generation of builders.

Explore the project: laollita.es