EmanuelB

Get ready for that promotion!

The initial intention was actually not to build it in this way. I ended up with this design by trying something simple, finding limitations that prevented scaling to new features, changing the design, rinse and repeat. A much simpler design can solve 80% of all needs, but I have been obsessed with the last 20% over many years. Of course all features won’t be there at launch, but I know they are possible to do in a nice way with this design.

Food is incredibly diverse and each country, language, culture etc have a different way of doing the same thing. I don’t know what this app will be in 1 year, but I know that the foundation is like clay that can be molded into what it needs to be, even different experiences for different users. I wasted so much time and energy on food and found no recipe app (tried 50-60) that worked for me, that I figured someone should solve this issue once and for all. Humans should not deal with these issues anymore.

I believe Kastanj will make it easy for beginners to start cooking really good food without spending too much effort on everything that goes into it. I also believe it will scale well to more advanced users that needs more of a reference, and not the same help. The idea is that the app will be a tool that helps people regardless of their experience level, and get out of the way when they don’t need the same help. This internal graph design is the only design I have encountered that managed to adapt to these diverse use cases.

There are a long list of use cases a recipe app could cover: - some people track their calories. - some people follow certain diets - some people have allergies - some people live in regions where certain ingredients are hard to find or seasonal. - some people want to reduce their climate impact - some people want to save money, budget cooking - some people only cook for 2, some cook for 30 - some people prefer certain units, even in metric Europe there is variation. - people are picky with what they eat and don’t eat. - sometimes guests with allergies come over and you have to cook something you never cooked before, and it must work on the first try - and so on

Food is complex, people are even more complex and have complex preferences. All of these cases adds complexity with various edge cases. These cases are the last 20% a recipe app should solve. Very high effort but most people can live without it (diminishing returns). I believe Kastanj will solve these issues + many more. I believe it will enable people to start cooking and still help those that already know how to cook. The current design have adapted really well so far even for use cases I didn’t imagine. Now let’s hope it was worth the effort. It makes me happy to hear that you also imagined a design like this :)

Most recipes are a failure for beginners on the first try. I aim to make recipes bulletproof so anyone can pick up any recipe and it will just work.

The goal is to make the best recipe app ever. On a technical level recipes are built as graphs and assembled on demand. This makes multilanguage support easy, any recipe can use any unit imaginable, blind people could have custom recipe settings for their needs, search becomes OP, and there is also a wikipedia like database with information that links to all recipes. Because of the graphs; nutritional information, environmental impact, cost etc. can simply be calculated accurately by following linked graphs. Most recipe apps are very targeted to specific geographical regions and languages, this graph system removes a lot of barriers between countries and will also be a blessing to expats. Imagine an American in Europe that wish to use imperial units, english recipes, but with ingredients native to their new homeland. No problem, just follow a different set of nodes and the recipe is created that way for them.

The website is slightly outdated but gives a good idea of what is coming. Current goal is to do beta launch in 2026.