User Guide

Recipe Retriever is your AI-powered digital cookbook. You can browse public recipes without an account, but creating one unlocks saving, meal planning, and personal organization.

• Create an account: Visit Sign up and register with email + password, or sign in with Google from the Login page.
• Onboarding: First-time users are walked through a short wizard to set a display name, choose owned cooking equipment, and tag any dietary preferences. You can revisit this flow anytime from your Profile.
• Free tier: Comes with a generous monthly recipe extraction quota — enough to evaluate every feature.
• Need help? Email support@developerbox.ca or open a bug report on GitHub.

Open Add Recipe (or the home page) and choose one of four creation modes:

From a URL

Paste any recipe link and let the AI extract the title, ingredients, and instructions. Supported sources include:

• Recipe blogs and standard cooking websites
• YouTube (full URLs, youtu.be short links, mobile)
• TikTok (tiktok.com, vm.tiktok.com, vt.tiktok.com)
• Instagram (where the post is publicly viewable)
• Pinterest (pinterest.com, pin.it)
• Facebook & Threads (facebook.com, fb.watch, threads.net)

Login-walled posts can't always be fetched — see the Troubleshooting section for the screenshot workaround.

From an Image

Snap or upload a photo of a finished dish, give it a title, and the AI will reverse-engineer a plausible recipe. Great for restaurant meals, family dishes without written recipes, or photos friends send you.

From Your Cupboard (Premium)

Type a list of what you have on hand — or photograph your fridge or pantry — and the AI will generate a recipe using only those ingredients. Available with a Premium subscription.

Manual Entry

Prefer to type? Add a title, ingredients (one per line), instructions, equipment, and tags directly. No AI calls are consumed.

Review and Save

After extraction you can edit any field before saving. Click Save Recipe to add it to your personal cookbook. Recipes default to private; you can make them public later.

Everything you save lives in My Recipes. From there you can search, filter, and open any recipe.

• Folders: Create folders to group recipes (e.g. “Weeknight Dinners”, “Desserts”). Use the folder bar at the top of My Recipes to switch views.
• Tags: Apply comma-separated tags to any recipe for fast filtering across folders.
• Edit: Open a recipe and click Edit Recipe to update the title, summary, ingredients, instructions, equipment, or servings.
• Privacy: Toggle a recipe between Public and Private. Public recipes appear on the Discover feed.
• Serving scaler: Adjust the servings count and every ingredient amount updates proportionally.
• Nutrition: Click Calculate Nutrition to estimate per-serving calories, protein, carbs, fat, fiber, sugar, and sodium. Estimates are AI-derived, not certified.
• Equipment: See the equipment a recipe needs and cross-reference against the kitchen tools you set on your profile.
• AI Image: If a recipe has no image — or you don't love the existing one — generate a photorealistic image with Imagen.
• Remix: Transform any recipe into a dietary variation (Vegan, Keto, Gluten-Free, and more) in seconds.
• Alternate Cooking: Adapt a recipe to a different appliance — air fryer, microwave, slow cooker, oven — and the AI adjusts timing and method.
• Export: Download a single recipe as Markdown, or export your entire collection as a ZIP from your Profile.

• Meal Planner: A weekly calendar with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack slots for each day. Add recipes from your cookbook to any slot.
• Grocery List: Generate a consolidated shopping list from the meals you've planned. Duplicate ingredients across recipes are merged automatically.
• Manual items: Add anything else you need to the list — tin foil, paper towels, ice cream — and check items off as you shop.

• Discover: Browse recipes shared by the community. Sort by newest or oldest and filter by name or tags.
• Search: The search bar in the top navigation queries the public recipe collection.
• Make a recipe public: Open any saved recipe and flip the privacy toggle to Public. It will then appear on Discover under your display name.
• Comments & replies: Public recipes support threaded comments — reply to any specific comment, and add emoji reactions to comments you appreciate.
• Likes: Tap the heart on a public recipe to like it. The like count is visible to everyone.

Visit your Profile to:

• Update your display name and bio (visible on public recipes you author).
• Maintain your Equipment list — used to highlight recipes that match what you own.
• Set Dietary Preferences (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, allergies, etc.) so suggestions stay relevant.
• View your monthly and daily request usage against your plan limits.
• Export your full recipe collection as a Markdown ZIP.
• Re-run the onboarding tour at any time.
• Change your Language — the entire UI updates instantly.
• Manage or cancel your subscription via Stripe.

Upgrading to Premium unlocks higher usage tiers and exclusive features:

• Cupboard Recipes: Generate recipes from a description or photo of the ingredients you already have.
• Higher monthly limits for AI extraction, image generation, remix, and nutrition flows.
• Priority access to new AI features as they launch.

Visit your Profile and click Upgrade to Premium. You'll be redirected to Stripe to complete a secure payment. Cancel anytime from the same page.

• Install on your home screen: Recipe Retriever is a Progressive Web App. On Android/Chrome you'll see an Install prompt; on iOS use Safari's share sheet → Add to Home Screen.
• Share Target: Once installed, the app appears in your device's share sheet. Share a recipe URL to it from another app and Recipe Retriever opens with extraction pre-loaded.
• iOS Share Sheet (advanced): Follow the iOS share setup guide to add an Apple Shortcut that integrates extraction directly into the iOS share menu.
• Offline: If you lose connection, you'll see a friendly offline page and previously cached pages remain available.

• Languages: The interface is available in English, French, Spanish, and Italian. Switch via the language toggle in the top navigation — your choice persists across sessions.
• Theme: Toggle between light and dark mode using the theme button in the navigation bar. Recipe Retriever respects your system preference by default.

• Best URL sources: Recipe blogs and YouTube videos give the most accurate extractions. Long-form articles with explicit ingredient lists work best.
• Always review: AI extractions are excellent but not perfect — skim the ingredients and instructions before saving to catch any quantities or steps that drifted.
• Use tags liberally: Tag every recipe at save time. Tags make filtering across a large cookbook trivial.
• Plan, then shop: Build your meal plan first, then generate the grocery list — duplicate ingredients across recipes merge automatically into a single shopping line.
• Make recipes public selectively: Public recipes appear on Discover under your display name. Keep private anything you'd prefer not to attribute.
• Nutrition is an estimate: Per-serving macros are AI-derived. They're a useful guide, not a certified nutritional analysis.

• Extraction failed from Instagram or a login-walled site: These platforms can't always be fetched server-side. The easiest workaround: take a screenshot of the post and use From Image to upload it with a title.
• “Limit reached” message: You've hit your monthly or daily AI quota. Wait until it resets or upgrade to Premium for higher limits.
• Generated image looks off: Click Regenerate with AI on the recipe page — each generation produces a different result.
• I lost a recipe: Recipes can't be recovered once deleted. Use Export as Markdown on important recipes for an offline backup, or export your whole collection from the profile page.
• Can't install on iOS: Open the site in Safari (not Chrome on iOS), tap the share button, then choose Add to Home Screen.
• Still stuck? Email support@developerbox.ca or open an issue on GitHub. We typically reply within 24–48 hours.