ChefPad — Recipe Manager

A local-first recipe management tool. Add recipes with cuisine and cooking time, build ingredient lists and step-by-step instructions, rate your favorites, search by keyword or ingredient, and get random meal suggestions — all from the command line.

Commands

Data Storage

• Location: ~/.chefpad/
• recipes.json — Stores all recipes with their ingredients, steps, ratings, cuisine, and cooking time
• favorites.json — Reserved for favorite recipe tracking
• Both files are auto-created as empty JSON arrays on first run
• All data is stored locally as JSON — no external APIs, no network calls, no accounts needed

Requirements

• bash (any modern version)
• python3 (standard library only — uses json, time, random)
• No external dependencies or API keys required

When to Use

1. Building a personal recipe collection — Add recipes you discover or create, complete with ingredients and step-by-step instructions, all stored locally.
2. Meal planning with what you have — Use suggest with ingredients in your fridge to find matching recipes from your collection.
3. Quick dinner decisions — Use random when you can't decide what to cook and want a surprise pick from your saved recipes.
4. Searching by cuisine or ingredient — Quickly find all Italian recipes or everything that uses chicken with the search command.
5. Rating and tracking favorites — Rate recipes after cooking them to build a curated list of your best dishes over time.

Examples

# Add a new recipe
chefpad add "Kung Pao Chicken" chinese 25

# Add ingredients to the recipe (use the ID shown after adding)
chefpad ingredient 1710000000 "500g chicken breast, diced"
chefpad ingredient 1710000000 "100g roasted peanuts"
chefpad ingredient 1710000000 "3 dried chili peppers"
chefpad ingredient 1710000000 "2 tbsp soy sauce"