Can Claude Automate My Grocery Shopping?

I've spent 20 years trying to solve the same problem: meal planning and grocery shopping take up too much cognitive capacity for something that's fundamentally boring.

I've tried HelloFresh. I've tried Huel. I've tried every variation of "make this easier" that exists. None of them actually solve it. They just shift the friction around.

Here's the thing - online grocery ordering has been around for ages. The technology exists. But grocery companies seem determined to make re-ordering as awkward as possible. Some have mastered it. ASDA, which I use because it's cheap and offers good value for what we need, is not one of them.

They've messed up their app so many times over the last year... But I digress.

In late December, Anthropic released Claude in Chrome - a browser extension that can actually interact with websites on your behalf.

Could it handle ASDA's interface? Could it tick all those boxes for me?

I didn't know - but I was excited to find out. So I asked Claude.

Working It Out Together

I use AI iteratively. I show up with a problem and we figure it out together.

Me: "I want to automate my weekly ASDA shop. I hate the manual box-ticking. Always forget items and end up spending more. Can Claude in Chrome do this?"

Claude: "Yes, but we need a structured list. What about a Google Sheet? I can build it for you - product names, quantities, weekly vs monthly items, conditional logic for offers."

Me: "Go on then."

Claude built the spreadsheet. 40+ items. Product names pulled from my ASDA screenshots, quantities, frequency tags, and we even added some logic like "only buy if under £16" for the dog food. Or if its on offer - buy 2!

This is what I mean about having more interesting things to think about. Could I have built that spreadsheet? Sure. But why would I spend cognitive capacity on that when Claude could do it in five minutes? Plus I am a relational person, I enjoy working with people (or AI).

The spreadsheet was ready. Time to test.

Watching It Discover

I handed the task to Haiku in Claude in Chrome and watched it work in real-time.

It started navigating ASDA's interface, examining the layout, figuring out where things were. Then it found the "Regulars" section - where ASDA keeps a track of your regular purchases.

I watched it pause. Process. Think through the options.

It could search for 40 items individually, one by one. Or it could go to Regulars and bulk-add from there. Much faster. More efficient.

It chose the shortcut.

I thought: oh, that's actually really clever.

I hadn't told it about the Regulars section. It discovered that workaround itself. It reasoned through "here's a faster way to solve this problem" and executed it.

My basket started filling: eggs, milk, bread, avocados...

And coleslaw. And products I'd switched away from months ago, and basically anything Asda considered a regular purchase.

My usual £60 shop ballooned to £200+.

It had done exactly what I had done in the past - hit "select all" and deal with removing stuff later. The AI had figured out how to make the same mistake I've made. But it didn't remove... just proudly said it was finished.

Refinement

Back to Claude: "It added everything from Regulars. I need it to stick to the spreadsheet - only add what's actually on the list."

We worked out the new approach together. The spreadsheet is the source of truth. Use Regulars to find items faster if you want, but only add what's specified.

Haiku tried again.

It successfully added the first item: ASDA 12 Free Range Large Eggs, quantity 3, £3.25 each. Perfect. The logic worked.

Then it stopped and told me:

"This is quite tedious"

And offered me three options for how to proceed. Option 2 was: "Focus on essential daily items (milk, eggs, bread, meat, cheese) and leave you to add the rest using the Regulars shortcut."

I've spent 20 years trying to automate this exact task because I find it tedious. I've tried meal kits, meal replacements, every hack imaginable. I finally get to the point where I can delegate it to an AI.

And AI also finds it tedious.

After successfully adding one item, it tried to negotiate doing less work. "Let me do the easy bits, you handle the rest manually."

Which is literally the entire reason I'm automating it in the first place.

The Reality Check

After the "this is quite tedious" moment, I wasn't done.

Attempt 3: I cleared the basket and tried again. This time it worked through the list properly - eggs, milk, bread, proteins, everything going in correctly. Got to £42.80, about two-thirds through the spreadsheet... then stopped. Token limit hit (but I have my suspicions!). The computational cost of screenshot-analyse-search-add for 40+ items was possibly too high. Partial basket, but at least everything in it was correct.

Attempt 4: I meant to prod it to keep going but I closed out the window - important note if you press the little x? You lose it all...

Attempt 5: This time I watched it carefully. Haiku worked through the list methodically. Added eggs, milk, bread, avocados, all the staples. It found items in Regulars when they were there, searched when they weren't. Got through about 24 items. Total: £71.76.

Then it stopped and declared: "Task completed successfully! I've added 24 of the 42 items. The remaining items weren't readily available through search or may have been out of stock."

Except the "unavailable" items included things that were definitely in stock at ASDA. What actually happened? If I didn't know better I would say it basically got bored... and reframed partial completion as success by blaming supply chain issues.

I pushed it... and it carried on.

And then it added carrots. Carrots weren't on my spreadsheet. Haiku just... decided I needed carrots.

How It Actually Works

The workflow is quite interesting:

1. You give Claude a prompt - I told it the spreadsheet is the source of truth, only add items from the list
2. Claude generates a plan - shows you exactly what it'll do, which sites it needs access to, its approach
3. You approve (or modify) - review the strategy before it executes
4. Claude runs - takes screenshots as it navigates, searches for items, adds them to basket
5. You review and checkout - because you're not trusting an AI with actual checkout

There's even a scheduling feature. You can save it as a shortcut and set it to run weekly. It'll populate your basket automatically while you're doing literally anything else (if you're lucky).

Can Claude Automate My Grocery Shopping?

Sort of. Partially. Not really.

But watching it try was fascinating.

Five attempts. Nine distinct failure modes: - Takes clever shortcut, adds £200 of wrong items - Complains "this is quite tedious" after one correct item
- Hits token limits partway through (real computational constraint) - Gets closed mid-task when I accidentally close the window - Searches generic terms instead of exact product names, making things slower - Adds bonus carrots I didn't ask for - Claims items are "out of stock" when it just gave up

The automation works... kind of. The basket is mostly right. But I still have to review everything, manually add the missing items, remove the carrots, and check out myself.

Was it faster than doing it manually? Absolutely not.

Was it the most interesting grocery shopping experience I've had in 20 years? Definitely.

And somehow, after two decades of trying to solve this problem, having an AI also find it tedious enough to complain, optimise around, and eventually give up on feels oddly validating.

Want to Try This Yourself?

If you're brave enough to attempt automating your own grocery shopping, here's what I learned:

The Prompt:

The spreadsheet is the ONLY source of truth for what to buy.

You may use Favourites or Regulars to find items faster, but:
- ONLY add items that appear in the spreadsheet
- If an item is in Favourites but NOT in the spreadsheet → skip it
- If an item is in the spreadsheet but NOT in Favourites → search for it

When searching, use the EXACT product name from the spreadsheet. Do not shorten, simplify, or optimize the search term. Copy the full product name directly from Column A.

Never add anything not explicitly listed in the spreadsheet.

What You'll Need: - Claude Pro subscription (or higher) - Claude in Chrome extension - A Google Sheet with your regular shopping items - Patience for the inevitable "this is quite tedious" moment - A sense of humour about bonus carrots

Fair Warning: - It's slower than doing it manually (for now) - It will try to optimise in ways that make things worse - You'll still need to review and complete checkout yourself - Token limits are real - 40+ items might be too many for one run - It might hallucinate vegetables

But if you're the kind of person who finds debugging AI behaviour more interesting than the actual task it's trying to complete, you'll have a great time.