An app to save recipes from websites lets you paste a recipe link and keep the whole recipe, then plan your week and shop from it. I built mine with Claude Code. It turns a link into a saved recipe, puts it on a day, adds it to one shopping list sorted by store section, and my husband rates dinner afterward. I’ve used it every week since I built it, and a generator below writes the setup for yours.
I wanted the features I wanted
I wanted the features I wanted, so in July I built my own meal planner with Claude Code, just for me. I save recipes from blogs mostly. I add the link, it gets all the info and saves it into my planner, and from there it plans my week and builds my shopping list.
I don’t like cooking, and it’s still groundhog day over here, where I make a lot of the same things. That has nothing to do with the app. If anything, the app has gotten me to try new things. The not liking cooking part is its own problem, and I went at that one over on my other blog, about resenting the chores that come with what you wanted.
It’s helped me with the shopping list and gotten me a little more creative. And the recipes print as grid cards, which have completely changed everything. More on those below.
What does an app to save recipes from websites do?
It turns recipe links into saved recipes you can plan and shop from. Mine does six things:
- Saves a recipe from a link. It also takes pasted text. It gives me an editable recipe card I can fix before saving, then keeps it in a library I can search and tag.
- Plans the week. I put recipes on days, or tap Pick my week and let it suggest some, using how I’ve rated things. Anything I don’t mark Made it carries into next week, so a skipped dinner doesn’t vanish.
- Builds one shopping list. The same ingredient from three recipes becomes one line, quantities scale to how many we’re feeding, and it’s sorted by store section. Pantry staples I always have get split out, so they don’t land on the list.
- Asks my husband to rate it. After I mark a recipe made, one tap sends him a link to rate it. His stars show up next to mine.
- Suggests swaps when I’m missing an ingredient, including gluten-free and dairy-free options.
- Prints recipe cards and has a cook mode.
Quantities show up as kitchen fractions, ½ and ⅓, instead of 0.333333, which sounds small until you’re standing at the stove doing math.
Who is a DIY meal planner for?
It’s for you if you save recipes from food blogs and recipe sites and want them in one place, with a plan and a shopping list built from your actual week.
Skip it if either of these is you:
- You want calorie or macro tracking. Mine doesn’t do that, and the generator doesn’t build it.
- An app you already have does what you want. Then you’d be building it for fun, which is a fine reason, just a different one.
What do you need to build your own meal planner?
- Claude Code, or another AI you can build with. Mine came together by describing what I wanted. My setup is in my Claude Code setup post.
- Somewhere for it to live. Mine is a small web app on Cloudflare Workers with a D1 database. If you’d rather keep it simple, the generator also has an Airtable version.
- An AI API key, only for the smart parts. Mine uses Claude to read recipes that don’t publish clean data, suggest swaps, and help pick the week. API use costs money per use, so the generator keeps those parts optional.
- An email service, only if you want the rate-it link to go to someone else in your house.
How does a meal planner turn recipe links into a shopping list?
It reads the recipe data the page already publishes, then does the math across the whole week. A recipe page can include a block of structured recipe data behind the scenes, with the ingredients and steps already separated. My app reads that first. When a page doesn’t have it, or I paste text from somewhere else, Claude pulls out the ingredients and steps instead, and I check the card before it saves.
The shopping list is where the work happens. For each week it:
- Collects every ingredient from every recipe on the plan.
- Cleans up the names, so “garlic cloves, minced” and “garlic” land on the same line.
- Converts and adds up the amounts, scaled to our servings.
- Sorts it by store section, like produce and dairy and eggs.
- Pulls out the pantry staples I told it I always have.
Not everything I built stayed. This is what I tried and what I kept:
| What I built | What happened |
|---|---|
| Emailing my husband meals to choose from | Didn’t work out. I want to make what I want to make, and what makes sense for that week. |
| A one-tap link for him to rate dinner after | Kept. I like this one. |
| The combined shopping list | Kept. I use it at the store every week. |
| Instacart ordering | Built in, not switched on. It could be. |
Why grid recipe cards changed how I cook
My brain hates reading traditional recipes. I’d get three steps in, look away to chop something, look back, and lose my place. Then I’d reread the same paragraph for the fourth time, hunting for which ingredient I hadn’t used yet. I read 50+ books a year, and recipe instructions still slide right out of my head.
My sister Shelley sent me a recipe laid out as a grid. Ingredients run down the left, and each step reaches across and gathers up the ingredients it needs, so the whole recipe fits in one look. The format isn’t mine. Michael Chu published it in 2004 on Cooking for Engineers and called it tabular recipe notation. I’m not affiliated with him, I just fell for it.
I added grid cards to my meal planner first, and they completely changed everything. Shelley said I should make an extension, so I did. It’s called Recipe Column Cards, and it works on recipe pages outside my app. You click it on a recipe page and it prints the grid card. The generator below doesn’t build the grid part, so if that’s the piece you want, the extension is the shortcut. I wrote up how it came together over on Jen Tried It.
Get the generator
The generator asks where your recipes come from, how many people you’re cooking for, which pieces you want, and whether you’d rather build a small web app or keep it simple in Airtable. Then it writes a prompt to paste into Claude or ChatGPT, a skill for Claude Code, or both.
Build it one piece at a time. Start with importing recipes and the shopping list, since those are the parts I use every week, and add the rest once those work. To use the skill, save it as SKILL.md in its own folder under ~/.claude/skills/.
What it doesn’t do
It doesn’t make me like cooking. It’s gotten me to try new things, but I still make a lot of the same meals, and that’s on me.
It doesn’t track calories, macros or nutrition.
It doesn’t order groceries. Instacart is built in but switched off, so the list goes to the store with me.
It isn’t for sale. It’s a private app for my kitchen, which is why there’s no link to it here. The generator is how you get your own.
Frequently asked questions
Is there an app to save recipes from websites and plan meals?
Yes, you can build one. Mine saves a recipe when I paste the link, plans the week from those recipes, and builds a shopping list. The generator on this page writes the setup for your own version.
How do I get recipes from a website into a meal planner?
A recipe page can publish structured recipe data behind the page, with the ingredients and steps already separated. A meal planner can read that directly. When a page doesn’t have it, an AI can pull the ingredients and steps out of the text for you to check.
Can a meal planner make one shopping list from several recipes?
Yes. It collects every ingredient on the week’s plan, merges matching ones, scales the amounts to your servings, and sorts the list by store section. Mine also skips the pantry staples I always have.
Do I need to know how to code to build a meal planner app?
You don’t have to write the code yourself. I built mine with Claude Code by describing each feature. You still make the decisions about what it should do, and you test it with real recipes.
What is a grid recipe card?
A grid recipe card lists ingredients down the left and steps across the top, so each step sits next to the ingredients it uses. The format comes from Michael Chu’s Cooking for Engineers site in 2004.
Try it yourself
An app to save recipes from websites and plan meals comes down to three jobs: save the recipe from its link, put it on the week, and build one shopping list, and everything else is optional.
Use the generator above and build the import and the shopping list first. If grid cards are what caught your eye, try Recipe Column Cards on tonight’s recipe. And if you like seeing how I build things just for me, my strength training plan post is the same idea for workouts.
A tool I built
Recipe Column Cards
A Chrome extension that prints any recipe page as one engineered grid card, ingredients down the left, steps flowing right. Three free prints a month.
Print your first card →I run an affiliate program on the tools I build. Approved affiliates earn 20% on what their referrals pay, for up to a year. US only for now. See the program →
Related reading
- My Claude Code Setup: VS Code, One Extension, and a Mess of Folders
- I Built My Own Strength Training Plan for Women Over 40, at Home
- How I Do My Own Bookkeeping Without QuickBooks
Subscribe if you haven’t already. I’ve got more things I built just for me coming up. Go forth and automate the boring stuff.
