Your assistant.
Your recipes.

No. Assistant connections are optional. You can organize your recipes, plan meals, build grocery lists, and cook in Mealbench without connecting an assistant.

Follow our connection guide to connect ChatGPT or Claude. In Mealbench, Settings → Connect is where you manage connected assistants and disconnect them. ChatGPT and Claude have their own account requirements, availability, privacy policies, and possible fees.

The current Mealbench app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac can apply assistant requests. Keep Mealbench up to date: an older version may tell the assistant that an app update is needed.

Search titles, summaries, ingredients, and your notes; read a full recipe; create a recipe from a conversation or accessible source; or edit its ingredients, steps, servings, times, difficulty, notes, and source.

You can change a single ingredient or step without replacing the other lines, duplicate a recipe to try a variation, mark or unmark a favorite, and set a rating from 0 to 5 in half-star steps. Assistants can also count your recipes without reading their contents.

Attach a supplied photo from a file or web link, up to five per recipe. The connector attaches photos; it does not generate them. You can record a cooking for today or another date, but assistants cannot read your cooking history yet.

“Make a copy of the banana bread and change it to use whole wheat flour.”

List your collections and recipe counts, see the recipes in a collection in your order, create a collection, and add recipes to it. You can rename a collection, change its description, or reorder its recipes.

“Put this recipe in Weeknight Dinners.”

Read a week’s meals or a saved plan, add recipes to dated meals, add a quick meal such as leftovers, and move a meal to another day. You can save a week as a reusable plan, create an empty saved plan, or rename one.

Applying a saved plan adds its meals to the destination week; it does not replace meals already there. One request can copy up to 100 meals.

“Plan dinners for next week from my favorites, then put everything on my grocery list.”

Read your grocery list in its groups and order, add ingredients from a recipe or a week’s meals, check or uncheck items, and change an item’s text or quantity.

You can add up to 25 items in one request. An item already on the list is combined rather than repeated. Assistants cannot remove a grocery line or clear its text or quantity.

“Add eggs, milk, and 2 lemons to my grocery list.”

An assistant cannot delete a recipe or collection, remove a recipe from a collection, remove a grocery line, take a meal off a plan, or clear a rating. Make those changes in Mealbench.

It can record a cooking, but cannot read cooking history. It can attach an image you supply, but the Mealbench connector does not generate images. ChatGPT and Claude are the supported assistants.

Assistant changes are queued, not applied instantly. Open the current version of Mealbench so the app can apply the request. Then ask the assistant to check the result.

“In progress” or “unconfirmed” is not confirmation that the change was applied. Check the app and the request’s status before asking for the same addition again.

If an item changed after the assistant read it, Mealbench refuses the older edit so your newer change wins. This also applies to collection names, grocery lines, and planned meals. Ask the assistant to read the current item again, then request your edit.

A refusal can have another reason, such as a recipe limit. Ask the assistant to show the reason returned by Mealbench.

These features need a release of Mealbench that supports them. Update the app on the device applying the request, open it, and ask the assistant to check the request’s status before retrying.

Applying a saved plan adds to what is already scheduled. It does not clear or replace the destination week. Review that week before applying a plan, and remove any meals you no longer want directly in Mealbench.

Start with the connection guide’s troubleshooting section. You can manage your connection in Settings → Connect. If you still need a hand, contact us with the error message and your app version.

Your library lives on your own devices and syncs through your iCloud account.

While an assistant is connected, Mealbench keeps a copy on its servers, published from your device, so the assistant can search and read it. ChatGPT or Claude handles information shared with it under its own terms and privacy policy.

No. It sends a request, and your own Mealbench app applies the change. If you edited an item after the assistant read it, the older edit is refused. Your newer change is kept.

Open Settings → Connect in Mealbench and disconnect the assistant. After disconnecting your last assistant, you can delete the server copy from that screen. This does not delete your library on your devices or in iCloud.

Please do not send passwords, active connection codes, payment details, or private iCloud information. If you attach a screenshot, hide connection codes and any personal recipe content you do not want to share.