Traveler Uses AI Agents and Xiaohongshu's Diandian to Plan Seven-Day Henan Road Trip

The article said holiday travel without preparation can easily turn costly or disappointing, with hotel prices doubling at short notice, popular performances selling out and museums becoming fully booked. The author described earlier planning as exhausting because information was scattered across many tabs and notes, and because details such as opening hours and ticket policies often conflicted. A Notion itinerary captured key stops, the article said, but did not present day-to-day detail well.

The author set out four principles for using AI in travel planning. First, separate signals from noise by keeping only information that can support a concrete decision, such as where to stay that night or when to book a ticket. Second, treat first-hand official information as better than second-hand influencer notes, especially for times, tickets and reservations. Third, trust specific people over algorithms, since comments from ordinary visitors can be more reliable than polished promotional posts. Fourth, output quality depends on input quality, so the material supplied to an agent must be clear and well-sourced.

The workflow described in the article follows a chain: choose a travel theme, decide dates and target cities, select core attractions, map a route and book tickets, work backward to hotels, match restaurants along the route, then execute and adjust. Each step's output becomes the next step's input. The author used two layers of tools: Xiaohongshu's Diandian, available as a standalone app and WeChat mini-program, for discovery and source tracing, and local agents for drafting and revision.

According to the article, Diandian draws on Xiaohongshu's community of real notes and gives sources that can be traced back to original posts. When asked about attractions in Luoyang, for example, it can synthesize multiple notes into a text-and-image recommendation and a rough itinerary, completing an initial round of cross-checking. The author then read comments under those posts to collect specific, lived details. That material, along with attraction lists and note text, was fed into local agent tools such as ZCode, Claude Code and Workbuddy. The article recommended local agents over web chat interfaces because they can read and write local files and handle large documents more steadily. It added that visually capable models such as Zhipu's GLM-5.3-Flash can extract information from photos of ticket boards or route maps.

The author also used Amap's map mini-program to mark candidate attractions, restaurants and hotels and generate routes. Seeing the spatial relationship between stops made it easier to remove places that were not on the way. The process was iterative: when new information or official ticket policies appeared, they could be added and the draft revised. But the article said final decisions and final editing must remain with the traveler, not the agent.

For final delivery, the author converted the agent's Markdown draft into a single HTML file. The article said HTML is compact, opens in a mobile browser, can be sent through WeChat and saved locally, so it remains accessible when network signals are weak at scenic spots. The file used an overview page and daily pages, allowing the family to see the whole seven-day plan and switch to a specific day. The author noted that HTML was a personal preference; agents could also output Markdown, long images for a single day or illustrations.

For the trip itself, the family chose a theme of performances and food. Using Shanxi as the center and a one-way driving radius of about 500 kilometers, the author eliminated Ningxia because the couple had been there and it was about 700 kilometers away, Inner Mongolia because it had been visited during the Dragon Boat Festival, and Hebei because it was too close for a longer holiday. Henan was chosen over Shandong because its live theater performances and Central Plains food were more appealing to the parents. The family selected Luoyang, Dengfeng and Kaifeng in northern Henan. Nanyang was dropped because it sits at the southern end of the province and would greatly increase driving distance. Xuchang was dropped because visiting Pangdonglai would detour from the main route. Zhengzhou was skipped entirely because of limited time, limited interest in museums among the parents and husband, and the high-intensity outdoor performances at "Only Henan · Theater City" during crowded National Day conditions.

In Luoyang, the plan was White Horse Temple in the morning, a rest at the lodging at noon, and Longmen Grottoes in the afternoon until evening to see the Lushena Buddha after the lights came on. Near the end of planning, the author saw a Douyin promotion for autumn peonies at Shenzhou Peony Garden, checked that it was opposite White Horse Temple, and added it because greenhouse peonies can be viewed in October. The article also listed Dengfeng and the Songshan area as part of the route. The article represents the author's personal views, Shaoshupai said, and the publication only lightly edited the title and formatting.