Frequently Asked Questions

Mealr is a smart recipe management and AI kitchen assistant. It lets you import recipes from PDFs, organize your entire recipe library, ask AI questions about your recipes, build consolidated shopping lists, and follow step-by-step cook mode — all in one place.

Yes. Mealr is a responsive web app that works on any device — desktop, tablet, or phone. No app download required; just open it in your browser.

Yes — mealr has a Free plan with no credit card required. It includes up to 50 recipes, shopping lists, and cook mode. Paid plans unlock unlimited recipes, AI features, and library sharing. See pricing for details.

Yes. Your recipes are private by default and only visible to you. You can choose to share individual recipes or your library with specific people via invite links — nothing is public unless you explicitly share it.

Go to the Import section in the app and drag-and-drop your PDF files. You can import up to 25 PDFs at once. Mealr's AI automatically extracts ingredients, instructions, nutrition info, serving sizes, and more from each recipe.

Currently mealr supports PDF files. This covers the vast majority of digital recipe books, food blog printouts, and recipe card scans. Support for additional formats may come in the future.

Most PDF imports complete within a few minutes. Larger files or batches may take longer. You can monitor progress from the Imports page and will see a status badge for each file (queued, processing, complete, or failed).

The AI assistant (called Ask) is a chat interface that understands your entire recipe library. You can ask it natural-language questions like "What can I make with chicken and tomatoes?", "How many of my recipes take under 30 minutes?", or "Suggest a substitution for heavy cream." It searches your whole library before answering, can create and update your shopping lists when you ask, and remembers your lasting preferences. Tap How I got this under any answer to see the steps it took and its reasoning.

Yes. Ask conversations are saved as persistent threads, synced across all your devices. You can start a conversation on your phone and continue it on your desktop.

When a request is wide open, like "What should I make for dinner?", Ask may ask one to three quick questions (how much time you have, who you're cooking for, any dietary needs) so it can pick well. Tap an answer, type your own, or choose Just pick for me and it will choose sensible defaults. If your request already includes details, like "a vegetarian dinner under 30 minutes", it skips the questions and answers right away.

Yes. Ask learns lasting preferences from your chats, like diets, allergies, dislikes, or how many people you usually cook for, and uses them later so you don't have to repeat yourself (for example, "Since you're vegetarian…"). What you say in the current chat always takes priority. It learns only from your messages and Ask's replies, not from the contents of your recipes, and new preferences can take a few minutes to appear. Your preferences are yours alone: they stay with you even when you're viewing a library someone shared with you, and they're never visible to other people.

Open the account menu and choose What Mealr remembers. You'll see every preference Ask has learned, and Forget removes one immediately. The chat snippets Ask learns from are deleted automatically after 30 days, and learned preferences stay until you forget them. If you mention a preference again in a chat, Ask may learn it again.

Yes, when you ask it to. Ask can create a shopping list from recipes it suggested, add or remove recipes, rename a list, and change servings. Each change appears in the chat with an Open list link. Ask never deletes a list on its own: if you ask it to, it shows a confirmation with Delete list and Keep it, and nothing is deleted until you tap Delete list. In a library someone shared with you, the owner's lists follow their sharing settings: collaborators can edit them, viewers can only look, and lists can't be created or deleted there.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI agents connect to external tools and data sources. Mealr exposes your recipe library as an MCP server, so AI tools like Claude and Cursor can search, read, and reason about your recipes directly — without you copying and pasting anything.

Mealr currently supports Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and Cursor. Any MCP-compatible agent or IDE extension can connect using the same configuration. More integrations may be added as MCP adoption grows.

Sign in to mealr and go to Account → MCP Setup. You'll find a ready-to-paste config block for each supported tool. Copy it into your tool's config file and restart — that's it. Your recipes are immediately available to the agent.

Yes. The MCP server uses OAuth — the same auth system as the mealr app. Your recipes are only accessible to agents you've authorized. You can revoke access at any time from your account settings.

Yes. You can generate a public share link for any recipe. Anyone with the link can view the recipe without signing up — no account needed.

Yes, with a mealr account. You can invite other mealr users to access your library as a viewer (read-only) or collaborator. Collaborators can add to shopping lists and browse all your recipes.

You can cancel anytime from Account → Security in the app. Your paid access continues until the end of your current billing period, after which your account moves to the Free plan.

Email us at support@mealr.recipes. We typically respond within 1–2 business days.