Getting Started

What is Foodex?

Foodex is a kitchen for your recipes. You collect recipes in one place, and Foodex keeps track of everything around them: what's in your pantry, what you're planning to cook this week, and what you still need to buy.

The three everyday pieces fit together like this:

• Your pantry knows what you have.
• Your meal plan knows what you intend to cook.
• Your shopping list is worked out from the difference: everything your plan needs that your pantry can't cover.

You never maintain the shopping list by hand. Plan a meal and the missing ingredients appear; buy them and they land in your pantry; cook the meal and they're used up. The rest of Foodex (collections, dishes, prices, tools) builds on that loop.

Signing In

You sign in with an account you already have. The sign-in page lists the services your Foodex accepts (which sign-in options are offered depends on how it's set up). There's no separate Foodex password to create or remember: pick a service and sign in there.

The first time you sign in, Foodex asks one question: what should we call you? That name is how the rest of your household sees you. You can change it later on your Profile page.

Your Household

A household is your shared space in Foodex: the people you cook with. Your recipes, pantry, meal plan, and shopping list all belong to the household, so everyone in it sees the same kitchen. You belong to one household at a time.

After signing in for the first time, you'll either:

• Create a household: give it a name (like "Smith Family" or "Apartment 4B") and you become its owner.
• Join a household: if someone already has one, they can send you an invite link or code. Open the link (or paste the code on the Get Started page) and you're in.

Invite links survive the sign-in detour: if you open one while signed out, you'll be brought right back to it after signing in.

Finding Your Way Around

The top navigation bar (bottom tabs on a phone) covers the everyday areas. On a phone, pages without a tab of their own live behind the menu button in the top bar.

• Recipes: browse, search, and cook. See Browsing & cooking.
• Collections: group recipes however you like. See Collections & dishes.
• Assistant: chat with an AI that knows your kitchen. See Import & the assistant.
• Pantry: what you have at home. See Pantry.
• Plan: what you're going to cook. See Meal plan.
• Shopping List: what to buy, worked out for you. See Shopping list.
• Scan (phone tab): point your camera at a barcode to add groceries to your pantry.

The smaller links (Ingredients, Stores, Tools) are shared reference catalogs used across all households; they're covered in Ingredients & prices and Households.

What's Shared, What's Yours

Foodex is a shared cookbook: recipes are visible across households by default, so you can browse and cook what others have added, and they can cook yours. A few things control what's shared:

• Private recipes are only visible to your household. Use this for secret family recipes or works in progress.
• Your pantry, plan, and shopping list are household-only. Other households never see them.
• Favorites are personal: your hearts are yours alone, even within your household.
• Ingredients, stores, tools, and dishes are shared catalogs everyone can browse and improve, like a wiki.

Where to Go Next

If you're new, read the pages in order using the links at the bottom of each page. If you want the quick wins first:

• Import a recipe from a photo, URL, or pasted text and let the AI do the typing.
• Scan your groceries into the pantry as you unpack them.
• Plan a meal and watch the shopping list write itself.