TLDR Tech / Dev
How Yelp Built “Yelp Assistant”
Yelp built an AI assistant that answers specific questions about businesses (like “Is the patio heated?”) by pulling evidence from reviews, photos, and business attributes instead of relying on the LLM's own knowledge. The real challenge wasn't the initial prototype, but rather making it production-ready, which meant splitting a single bloated LLM call into specialized stages, keeping data fresh in near real-time, and cutting latency from 10+ seconds down to under 3.5.
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