SmartChef
A recipe app that reads your grocery receipt, stocks your pantry and tracks the spend.
I built SmartChef: a subscription recipe app, shipped alongside its web admin and its public site. I built the receipt scanning that stocks the pantry on its own, the AI assistant that turns whatever is in the fridge into recipes, and the nutritionist commission program.
- My role
- Architecture, mobile app, backend and AI integration
- Sector
- Alimentos / Bienestar
- Scope
- App móvil + Administrador web + Sitio web
- 3
- Systems delivered
- 3
- Ways to fill the pantry
- 3
- Commission states
- 2
- Roles in one app
Stack
- React Native (Expo)
- React (Vite)
- Material UI
- React Native Paper
- Node.js
- Express
- JavaScript
- MySQL
- Docker
- Dokploy (CD/CI)
- OpenAI
- Stripe
Screens
Screenshots from the live system.
App móvil
Recetas por categoría con su video y sus pasos, plan de comidas por día, favoritos y el cruce de cada receta contra lo que hay en la despensa.
App móvil
Escaneo de tickets y asistente con IA
Se fotografía el ticket del súper y la app lee los productos, los relaciona con su catálogo y los da de alta en la despensa con sus cantidades, registrando el gasto. El asistente recibe los ingredientes que uno tiene y devuelve recetas del catálogo por porcentaje de coincidencia, más recetas nuevas escritas al momento.
App móvil
La app en modo nutriólogo
Con el mismo login, la app cambia por completo para un nutriólogo: su código de referido para compartir, cuántos pacientes tiene con suscripción activa y la gráfica de comisiones mes con mes. Puede abrir la ficha de cada paciente para ver su evolución de peso y el plan que capturó en Modo Fit, y sigue sus ganancias por estado — en retención, por pagar y pagadas — con los ajustes por reembolso a la vista.
App web
Administrador web
El catálogo completo: recetas con sus categorías, ingredientes con los sinónimos que alimentan a la IA, temporadas, tips y tutoriales. Más los usuarios con sus roles, los socios activos y la revisión de las recetas que manda la comunidad.
App web
Programa de nutriólogos y alcance por región
Los nutriólogos recomiendan la app con su código y el panel lleva sus comisiones: devengado, por pagar y pagado, con su periodo de retención. El catálogo también se segmenta por país y región, para que cada quien vea las recetas e ingredientes de su zona.
Sitio web
Sitio público
La página cuenta el producto en orden: el problema, cómo se llena la despensa por voz, ticket o a mano, lo que hace la app por ti, un recorrido por sus pantallas y los planes. Aparte hay una sección para nutriólogos, que recomiendan la app con su código y ganan comisión por cada suscripción activa.
The problem
Meal planning breaks at the same point every time: nobody remembers what is actually in the pantry, and entering groceries one by one is the kind of chore nobody does twice. The client wanted a subscription recipe app where that inventory kept itself current, and that could also show users what they had spent at the store against the savings they set out to make. They also needed a growth channel of their own: nutritionists recommending the app and earning commission on every active subscription, with the money properly tracked.
What I built
I built the app around the pantry: every recipe matches its ingredients against what the user already has, so the gaps are obvious before they schedule meals by date and servings. To keep it current I shipped three ways to fill it — a photo of the grocery receipt, voice, and manual entry; on the receipt path the app reads the products, maps them to the ingredient catalog, adds them with quantities, and logs the spend against previous months and against the savings target. On that same catalog I built the AI assistant: it takes what is in the fridge and returns catalog recipes ranked by match percentage, plus brand-new recipes written on the spot with full steps. For the internal team I delivered a web admin covering the whole catalog — recipes, ingredients and their synonyms, categories, seasons, tips, memberships — along with users and roles, the review queue for community-submitted recipes, and the day-to-day running of the nutritionist program. The mobile app is React Native on Expo; behind it, Node.js with Express and MySQL, Stripe for subscriptions, deployed with Docker and Dokploy.
Technical decisions
- 01
Grocery receipt straight into the pantry
Manual entry is where apps like this die. I solved ingredient intake by reading a photo of the receipt and matching each product against the catalog, so users get a stocked pantry and spend tracking without typing a thing.
- 02
Ingredient synonyms to ground the AI
Every ingredient carries synonyms, maintained from the admin panel. That layer is what lets receipt text and free-form chat input resolve to a real catalog ingredient instead of loose strings, and it is what makes a recipe's match percentage mean anything.
- 03
One app, two products
The same login flips the app entirely into nutritionist mode: referral code, patients on active subscriptions, month-over-month commission chart, and each patient's weight progress. I handled it by role inside one app rather than building, shipping and maintaining two.
- 04
Commissions with holdback and refunds
The nutritionist program moves other people's money, so I modeled commissions as explicit states — accrued, payable and paid — with the holdback period and refund adjustments visible in both the admin panel and the nutritionist's own app.
- 05
Catalog segmented by country and region
Recipes and ingredients are scoped by country and region from the admin, so the catalog a user sees reflects what they can actually buy locally. Without that, pantry matching and the match percentage stop being trustworthy.
Next project
ASH
A home-services marketplace that holds the money until the job is actually done.