A little over a year ago, I posted a thread with similar title showing my attempts at trying a simple large language model (llm) to create a bike trip plan. It didn't work that well.

Now a year later, several tools seem to have improved. In particular, I used a "deep research" aspect from Gemini. Among the improvements (1) this finds and pulls in content from the web so I am using more current info than just what the model was trained (2) it shows some 'reasoning' steps along the way.

In this case, I asked for help planning a two week bicycle tour to Madagascar that started in the capitol (Antananarivo), used transport to southern city and bicycled back. Some things are a bit more constrained and I'll want to double check things further but as a first cut much improved since my attempt last year. Report it generated is linked below

https://mvermeulen.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/wp-1748516986954.pdf

Gemini Deep Research has a 30 day trial and is also available for students. Otherwise part of their Google's paid options. I believe OpenAI has something similar but haven't used it.

Have others experimented with similar tools or found them to be useful or not so much?