Build your own meal planner app

A saved meal isn't the same as Tuesday's dinner

Suppose you cook lentil soup regularly. Its name, rough cooking time, and recipe notes belong to a saved meal. “Soup on Tuesday, make extra for lunch” belongs to one particular week.

Keeping those separate lets you move Tuesday's dinner without editing the meal itself. It also lets you plan soup twice without creating duplicate recipes. This is a small design decision with consequences every time the week changes.

For each saved meal, start with a name, cooking time, usual servings, and notes. For the plan, use a date, a meal choice, and a note for that day. Allow a simple text entry for “out” or “leftovers” so the app doesn't make you create a pretend recipe.

Describe an ordinary week

You can adapt this request in Kaddy's build conversation or another builder. It describes an app to create, so expect to check and refine the result:

Build a meal planner I can use on my phone. Save meals with a name, cooking time, usual servings, and notes. Give me a weekly dinner view where each day can use a saved meal or a text entry such as leftovers or out. Keep notes for a particular dinner separate from the saved meal. Let me move a dinner to another day and change the day's note without changing the recipe. Allow blank days. Start with manual entry and no grocery ordering or nutrition calculations.

Include one detail about your own week. If Wednesdays are always late, ask to see cooking time while choosing a meal. If you plan for only a few days, ask the app to open there rather than demanding a complete week.

Move Tuesday and see what changes

Use a couple of fictional meals for the first check. Put soup on Tuesday and Friday, with different notes. Move Tuesday's entry to Wednesday. Friday should remain where it was, and the saved meal should still exist.

Next, change the saved meal's cooking time. Decide whether you want both planned entries to reflect that change. Linking them to the saved meal is convenient; keeping a historical copy would be a different design. Tell the builder which behavior you expect rather than leaving it accidental.

Try the same changes on your phone, then refresh and check the saved week. If moving one dinner takes too much effort, fix that interaction before adding more features. You'll use it repeatedly.

Give the assistant the background

The app's regular conversation is a place to explain that you cook for two or prefer quick dinners on work nights. Kaddy's app-specific memory can carry that context into later conversations, and you can inspect and correct it.

Keep the agreed dinners in the plan itself. A suggestion in chat isn't something you should have to search for while cooking. After discussing the week, check what was actually saved, including dates and any changes to servings.

Add the shopping list when you know what it needs

A simple shopping checklist may be a useful next step. Automatically combining ingredients is a bigger one: “one onion,” “half a large onion,” and a free-text recipe note aren't quantities the app can safely add without rules.

Start by checking whether a manual list beside the week is enough. If you want calculated quantities later, decide how ingredients and units will be stored and how you'll mark things already in the cupboard. Recipe imports and grocery ordering need their own supported connections; the planner described here doesn't provide them.

You can also keep a recipe app you like and use your custom planner only to arrange dinners. The week view is a worthwhile app on its own if it helps you decide what to cook.