# MealPlan

> A household meal planner that reduces the cognitive load of "what should we eat?"

MealPlan helps households organize their known recipes into collections called cookbooks and plan meals for the week. The core problem it solves is decision fatigue at mealtime — not lack of cooking skill. Users bring their own recipes; the app provides the organization and planning layer.

## Key Concepts

- **Cookbook**: A named collection of recipes owned by a user. Can be private or shared with household members. Organized however the user thinks about food — by season, cuisine, theme, or anything else.
- **Recipe**: A saved dish with an optional source URL, prep and cook times, notes, and an ingredient list. Imported from a URL or entered manually.
- **Meal Plan**: A weekly grid of meal slots (breakfast, lunch, dinner, or custom slots) with recipes assigned to specific dates.
- **Meal Status**: Each planned meal entry can be marked as planned, done, or skipped.
- **Sharing**: Cookbooks can be shared with other users as viewers (read-only) or editors (can add and modify recipes). Sharing is per-cookbook, not per-recipe. Group management is handled server-side.

## Features

- Import recipes from URLs or enter them manually
- Organize recipes into themed cookbooks
- Plan the week using a walk-through flow (say yes/no to each recipe) or ingredient-based filtering
- Share cookbooks with household members at viewer or editor access levels
- Track which meals were done, skipped, or remain planned
- Optional Web Push notifications for daily meal reminders
- Installable as a Progressive Web App (PWA) on mobile and desktop
- Automatic shopping list aggregated from the planned week, with presence-only pantry staples flagged
- Export recipes and cookbooks as JSON, and the meal plan as a calendar (.ics) file

## What This App Does Not Do

No calorie counting. No nutrition or macro tracking. No recipe scaling. No external recipe discovery database. No points, badges, or leaderboards. No pantry quantity or expiry tracking — pantry staples are presence-only. No anonymous browsing — an account is required to use the app.

## Who It Is For

Households that already cook regularly and want to reduce the decision fatigue of "what should we eat?" Not targeted at fitness tracking, professional kitchens, or recipe discovery.

## Technical

- Web application (Vue 3 SPA); the authenticated app requires JavaScript
- Backend: Back4App (Parse Server) with server-enforced access control
- Hosting: Cloudflare Pages
- Free tier with usage caps, plus an optional paid Premium tier that raises them for a whole kitchen

## Pages

- [Home / Landing](https://mealplankitchen.com/) — Marketing overview, no sign-in required
- [Sign In / Sign Up](https://mealplankitchen.com/login) — Account creation and authentication
- [About](https://mealplankitchen.com/about) — Product context and origin story
- [FAQ](https://mealplankitchen.com/faq) — Common questions about recipes, planning, kitchens, plans, and data
- [Plans](https://mealplankitchen.com/pricing) — Free and Premium tier comparison
- [Patch Notes](https://mealplankitchen.com/patch-notes) — Release history
- [Terms of Service](https://mealplankitchen.com/terms)
- [Privacy Policy](https://mealplankitchen.com/privacy-policy)