Recipes and the menu with an assistant

Asking what to cook

The assistant asks Mealuna for recipes that suit your household, with the reasons each one fits: products about to expire, what your group likes, how much of it is already in the pantry, and variety.

You can narrow it the way the app does — by time, diet, course, ingredients, a cuisine you prefer, your own or your group's favourites, recipes that use what is about to expire, or ones you have not planned lately. The filters change over time, so ask the assistant which ones there are.

Allergens are not checked on the server. Tell the assistant about them; it should ask before it suggests.

Planning the menu

Once you allow changes, the assistant puts recipes into your group's menu plan as drafts, and takes drafts out again. A draft is a suggestion, not a decision: it waits in the Menu for you to confirm it, the other members of the group see it too, and Discard drafts or Generate again treat it like any autopilot suggestion.

It never changes a meal you confirmed or cooked, and writes only into the days the Mealuna apps show. If your group has no current menu plan, the first meal it plans starts one from today; if the plan ends too soon, it is extended to cover the days it plans — either way, the assistant tells you up to which day your menu now reaches. It never brings back a plan that has ended or moves when a plan starts.

When it plans, the assistant starts from your group's favourites — the recipes its members hearted, the dishes it has often had lately and its own recipes not made by AI — as Generate does. In Menu settings → Recipe sources you choose where Generate may take recipes from (favourites, dishes you often eat, your group's own recipes, verified recipes, Mealuna's library), and the assistant is asked to plan only from those too and to ask you when it cannot tell where a recipe comes from. It also keeps to meals you set to always appear at a meal time, such as porridge every breakfast. It cannot see your allergies or the exclusions you set, only whether you set any exclusions, so it should ask you what to avoid. Generate keeps to your exclusions, but the assistant's drafts are not checked against them, so check each draft yourself before you confirm it.

Saving a recipe

The assistant saves a recipe into the group when you ask: one it worked out with you, or one you tell it, is saved as your own recipe; one from a link you give it is saved as imported, the same as importing a link in the app. Saving the same recipe twice keeps one, and the other members of the group see it in their app.

A recipe can be a dish, or a sauce, marinade or side you make ahead for dishes to use. A dish can name its cuisine. An ingredient Mealuna does not know becomes a product of your group, with no nutrition until you add it in the app. The steps of a longer recipe can be grouped under short headings, such as Broth and Soup.

When part of what you buy is not eaten — a whole chicken's bones and skin, peel, broth you set aside — the assistant can note how much of it is eaten, so the recipe's nutrition counts only that while your shopping list keeps the whole amount. In an up-to-date Mealuna you see it under the ingredient and can change or remove it in the recipe.

Changing or deleting a recipe

The assistant changes your group's own recipes when you ask — the title, portions, time, course, cuisine, steps and ingredients — but never a published recipe or one of Mealuna's. Whether a recipe is a dish or a component stays as it was saved.

It deletes one of your group's own recipes when you ask. A sauce or other component that a recipe still uses is not deleted; the assistant names the recipes that use it. If the recipe changed after the assistant looked, it leaves it alone and says so.

Favourites

The assistant marks a recipe as your favourite, or takes the mark off, when you ask. It is the same heart you set in the app: it is yours, it shows on your devices, and the members of your groups see it on recipes they can see. It marks only recipes of the group it is working with, or public ones.