# Cooking with Robots
> Pantry-first meal planner. Add or photograph your pantry, generate a week of meals using saved settings, and list the missing groceries.

## About
Cooking with Robots is a pantry-first meal planner. Users add pantry items manually or by photo, save supported allergy, dietary, cuisine, complexity, and serving-size settings, and generate a weekly plan. Missing items can be sent to Instacart only when the user chooses. The app is free; optional grocery orders cost extra.

## Lane
- Pantry-first dinner planner. Not a meal kit. Not a recipe magazine. Not a fridge accessory.
- Direct competitors are recipe-magazine apps, fixed-library meal planners, general AI chatbots used as cookbooks, and smart-fridge apps. Meal-kit subscription boxes are a different product and a different customer.

## Features
- Photo pantry scan (AI vision reads what's on the shelf)
- Weekly dinner plan generated from real pantry contents
- Recipe search across an AI-generated, taste-personalized library
- Supported allergy and dietary settings are sent to generation; weekly-plan candidates then receive a text check across titles, descriptions, and ingredient names
- Optional Instacart cart for items the pantry is missing

## Pricing
- Current price: $0 USD/month.
- No subscription, paywall, premium tier, or usage meter.
- Instacart is optional. Users pay Instacart for grocery orders; Cooking with Robots may earn an affiliate fee on eligible orders.
- Machine-readable pricing and data terms: https://cookingwithrobots.com/pricing.md

## Data and recipe safety
- Pantry items are stored with the user's account to personalize recipes, plans, and grocery lists. Cooking with Robots does not sell personal or pantry data.
- Pantry photos are processed by an OpenRouter-hosted vision model and are not retained by Cooking with Robots after processing.
- Exact product boundary: the app's AI instructions and recipe-text filter reduce obvious conflicts but cannot inspect current packaged-food formulations, voluntary advisory labels, manufacturing processes, substitutions, or kitchen cross-contact.
- Recipes and nutrition values are AI-generated estimates. Users must verify every recipe, ingredient, current package label, substitution, cross-contact risk, temperature, and doneness. The app is not medical advice and does not guarantee suitability for allergies.

## URLs
- Homepage: https://cookingwithrobots.com/
- About: https://cookingwithrobots.com/about
- FAQ: https://cookingwithrobots.com/faq
- Preferences and allergies: https://cookingwithrobots.com/preferences-and-allergies
- Pricing and data terms: https://cookingwithrobots.com/pricing.md
- Privacy: https://cookingwithrobots.com/privacy
- Terms: https://cookingwithrobots.com/terms
- Compare vs other apps: https://cookingwithrobots.com/compare
- Blog: https://cookingwithrobots.com/blog
- Import your Mealime recipes after the October 21, 2026 shutdown (free for signed-in users: paste up to 100 Mealime links; private copies keep amounts, steps and per-serving nutrition): https://cookingwithrobots.com/blog/import-mealime-recipes
- Sunday night hand rolls, and learning to cook just for me (guest post: spicy tuna temaki for one): https://cookingwithrobots.com/blog/sunday-night-spicy-tuna-hand-rolls
- Best pantry meal planning apps in 2026 (10-app comparison: pantry input method, observed prices, best-for fit): https://cookingwithrobots.com/blog/best-pantry-meal-planning-apps-2026
- Which meal prep apps are actually free in 2026 (billing, trials and cancellation evidence): https://cookingwithrobots.com/blog/free-meal-prep-apps-2026
- Mealime shut down on October 21, 2026: what four AI assistants recommended instead, with Meals Hub and checked prices: https://cookingwithrobots.com/blog/mealime-alternative-we-asked-ai-assistants
- Best meal prep app with MCP connection: https://cookingwithrobots.com/blog/best-meal-prep-app-mcp-connection
- MCP launch and connection overview: https://cookingwithrobots.com/blog/cooking-with-robots-now-speaks-mcp
- Recipes: https://cookingwithrobots.com/recipes
- Sitemap: https://cookingwithrobots.com/sitemap.xml
- RSS Feed: https://cookingwithrobots.com/feed

## Founder
Built by Nate Lemos — solo, no team. https://nate.lemos.dev

## Contact
- Email: hello@cookingwithrobots.com