Everything you want to know.

What does MealsAIQ actually do?

MealsAIQ generates a complete weekly dinner plan tailored to your specific household — the meals, the full recipes with instructions, and a consolidated grocery list. You tell it about your family (who eats what, who's picky, any food sensitivities, what's in your fridge), and it handles the rest.

Each plan includes 1–7 dinners, two sides per main, a grocery list covering everything, and a calendar file you can import into Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, or Outlook.

How long does it take to generate a plan?

Typically 2–4 minutes. The app runs three sequential AI steps — finding candidates, evaluating and selecting across 16 dimensions, and writing full recipes — plus a live web search for each selected meal to find a real, citable recipe from a trusted cooking site. Keep your browser tab open during generation; you'll see each agent's status update in real time.

Do I need to set up a profile every time?

No — your family profile is saved to your account and carries forward automatically. Set it up once with each person's restrictions, preferences, and dislikes, and it's used every time. Each week you only need to fill in the quick "This Week" fields — things to avoid repeating, specific meals you want, ingredients on hand, and day-specific time constraints.

Can it account for busy nights or days when I have more time?

Yes — the "Day-specific logistics" field lets you tell the app about time constraints for specific days. For example: "Tuesday under 25 minutes, Wednesday is Scouts so very fast, Thursday I have more time." The Day Conflict Checker agent matches recipe complexity to each day — a slow-braised dish won't land on your busiest night.

This field is per-week and not saved in your profile, since your schedule changes week to week.

Can I tell it what's already in my fridge or pantry?

Yes — the "Ingredients on hand" field lets you list what needs to be used up this week. The app treats these as priorities, steering toward recipes that use them, and the Freshness Sequencer schedules highly perishable items (fresh fish, soft herbs, leafy greens) earlier in the week before they deteriorate.

This is separate from your Weekly Staples — the pantry fixtures and routine weekly purchases you always have or always buy (olive oil, canned tomatoes, eggs, your typical proteins). Staples are saved permanently in your profile and not listed on the grocery list, since you already have them. Keep this list to things you genuinely always have on hand; ingredients you run out of occasionally should stay off it so they appear on the list when needed.

How do I avoid buying duplicates or things I already have?

Two features work together here. First, items in your Weekly Staples list are flagged in the grocery list as pantry fixtures — they appear with a note so you can check before buying rather than automatically adding them to your cart. Second, the grocery list goes through a consolidation pass that merges duplicate ingredients across all meals and sides for the week — so if three different recipes call for garlic, chicken stock, or lemon, those get combined into a single line item with the total quantity, rather than appearing separately for each day.

What's in the family profile?

For each family member you can specify:

• Restrictions — absolute hard limits (sensitivities, allergies, dietary practices). Never violated.
• Needs — things that must be present
• Likes — soft preferences that influence selection
• Dislikes — soft preferences that steer away from certain ingredients or flavors
• Modifications — ingredient-level aversions where the recipe stays but a split step is added

What are the 16 AI agents?

MealsAIQ uses 16 specialized evaluation frameworks — each one scores or filters the candidate meal pool from a different angle before the final plan is assembled. They include nutrition balance, recipe complexity, budget, freshness sequencing, variety across the week, cuisine diversity across multiple weeks, kid appeal, food sensitivity checking, cross-contamination awareness, and more.

Five agents always run. The remaining eleven are toggleable — you can turn individual ones off in Settings if a particular dimension doesn't matter to your household. Your toggle settings are saved to your account automatically.

What happens when I turn an agent off?

That dimension no longer influences which meals get selected. It doesn't meaningfully reduce generation time, since all agents run within the same step, but it changes what the final plan optimizes for.

Dietary Constraints cannot be turned off — it is always active and always enforced. Filtering for your family's food sensitivities and restrictions is the one dimension that runs regardless of any other settings.

Does it remember what we ate last week?

Yes, in two ways. First, last week's meal names are automatically saved and used to avoid direct repeats. Second, the cuisine types from recent weeks are tracked — if you've had Mediterranean and Asian food three weeks running, the app steers toward less-represented cuisines this week, even if individual dish names are different.

You can also manually add meals to the "avoid repeating" field to exclude specific dishes from the candidate pool.

Can I request a specific meal even if it's on the avoid list?

Yes — explicit requests always take priority over the avoid list. If you type "chicken tacos" in "Meals I'd like this week" and chicken tacos is also in your avoid list, the app will include it and show a warning. Your request wins. The only thing that can block a requested meal is a dietary restriction — if a safe version can't be made for your household, it won't appear in the plan.

How does it handle food sensitivities?

Dietary restrictions are hard gates — any meal that can't be made safe for a family member is excluded. This applies not just to the named ingredient but to derivatives: Worcestershire sauce contains fish, tahini is sesame-derived, soy sauce typically contains wheat. The app reasons through these derivative chains rather than doing a simple keyword match.

For cross-contamination risks (shared fryer oil, "may contain" labeling), a note is added directly in the printed recipe where you'll actually see it while cooking.

What if only one person in the family has a restriction?

The app distinguishes between a restriction that applies to one family member and one that applies to everyone. If only one person can't eat a particular ingredient, the meal isn't automatically rejected — instead, a split step is added to the recipe: "before adding [ingredient], set aside [person]'s portion." The whole family eats the same dinner, just with a branch at the relevant step.

If the core identity of the dish is the restricted ingredient (a beef stew for a vegetarian member), it's excluded and a suitable alternative is selected instead.

What dietary practices are supported?

The app recognizes and applies precise ingredient rules for: vegan, vegetarian (lacto-ovo), lacto-vegetarian, ovo-vegetarian, pescatarian, kosher (including the meat-and-dairy combination rule), halal, low-FODMAP, histamine intolerance, nightshade sensitivity, corn sensitivity, soy allergy, and allium sensitivity (garlic and onion intolerance).

For kosher and halal, the app notes that it cannot verify sourcing or certification — those require using certified-compliant ingredients from trusted suppliers.

Is the dietary evaluation medically reliable?

No — and we're transparent about that. AI-generated dietary evaluations are a useful first pass, not a substitute for medical advice. Always independently verify ingredients are safe for individuals with anaphylactic allergies or medical dietary requirements before preparing and serving. See our full disclaimer in the Terms of Service.

What about substitutions — like veggie dogs instead of hot dogs?

When a recipe contains an ingredient a family member can't eat, the app evaluates whether a straightforward substitute exists. If a simple swap (hot dogs → veggie dogs, regular pasta → gluten-free pasta, soy sauce → tamari) keeps the dish intact, it makes that swap silently — the recipe and shopping list use the substitute throughout. If the substitution would fundamentally change the dish, the app selects a different meal from the candidate pool that works for your household without needing a significant substitution.

Where do the recipes come from?

For each selected meal, the app runs a live web search to find a real, tested recipe from a trusted open-access cooking site — AllRecipes, Budget Bytes, Simply Recipes, RecipeTin Eats, The Kitchn, Food Network, Taste of Home, Skinnytaste, Cooking Classy, and Half Baked Harvest, among others. The recipe is then adapted to your family size, with any required modifications and split steps added. The original source URL is always cited.

What if a recipe can't be found online?

If a live search doesn't turn up a usable recipe from an open-access site, the app falls back to writing a recipe from its culinary knowledge — clearly labeled as "inspired by" with the source noted. Paywalled sites (NYT Cooking, Epicurious, Bon Appétit) are never attempted, so you won't be sent to a page you can't read.

What if I paste in a URL for a specific recipe I want?

If you paste a recipe URL into "Meals or ingredients I'd like this week," the app fetches and uses that specific recipe, adapting quantities to your family size and adding any required modification notes. If the URL is paywalled, it falls back to its knowledge of that dish and keeps the original URL so you can access the source directly.

Will it suggest endangered species or unsafe ingredients?

No. The app won't propose dishes built around threatened or protected species — bluefin tuna, shark fin, whale, sea turtle, and similar. If you request such a dish, a sustainable alternative is substituted and the reason noted. Non-food or nonsensical requests in the "meals I'd like" field are ignored.

Can't I just ask an AI chatbot for a meal plan for free?

You can — and for a household with no dietary complexity and no need for consistency week to week, a chatbot might be good enough. But there are a few things MealsAIQ does that a general-purpose AI chat can't replicate easily.

What's the difference in practice?

Your profile is saved. With a chatbot, you re-explain your family every single time — who has which restriction, who won't eat what, what you had last week. With MealsAIQ, you set it up once and it's always there.

Real recipes, real sources. A chatbot generates recipes from memory with no citations. MealsAIQ fetches real, tested recipes from trusted cooking sites and cites the source URL.

Consistent weekly variety. A chatbot has no idea what you ate last week. It can't notice that you've had Mediterranean food three weeks in a row. MealsAIQ tracks this and actively diversifies over time.

Household complexity handled systematically. If you ask a chatbot to plan a week for one adult who's low-FODMAP, one child who won't eat anything green, and one adult who prefers pescatarian — with everything under 30 minutes on Tuesday — you'll get something plausible, but you'll need to manually verify every ingredient interaction. MealsAIQ checks those interactions across 16 dimensions as part of the generation process.

No prompting skill required. Getting a useful meal plan out of a chatbot requires knowing how to write a good prompt. MealsAIQ encodes that expertise in the app itself.

How is this different from other AI meal planners?

A few things stand out. Most AI meal planners are mobile-app-only — MealsAIQ works in any browser on any device, with no download required and no country restrictions. Most use a closed, proprietary recipe database — MealsAIQ fetches real recipes from open cooking sites and cites the source. And most treat dietary handling as filtering (remove recipes containing the allergen) rather than modification (keep the dish, add a split step for the affected person).

On variety: a common complaint with AI meal planners is that suggestions converge on the same 2–3 cuisines week after week. MealsAIQ specifically tracks cuisine distribution across recent weeks and steers toward underrepresented regions.

Is MealsAIQ transparent about how it works?

Yes — intentionally so. You can see which agents are running, what they're evaluating, and toggle individual ones on or off. You can read the agent activity logs after each run to see how decisions were made. Most meal planning tools are black boxes. MealsAIQ shows its work.

How does the free trial work?

Your trial includes two complete meal plan generations — full quality, all 16 agents, real recipe sourcing, everything. After your second plan, you have 7 days to cook from it, shop from the grocery list, and decide whether MealsAIQ is right for your household. If you don't cancel before those 7 days are up, your card is charged and your monthly subscription begins. You'll receive a reminder email a few days before your trial ends.

Why two free plans?

One plan shows you what MealsAIQ can do. Two plans show you how it works for your household over time.

The first plan is a chance to test the full capability — real recipes, dietary handling, the grocery list, the calendar export. The second plan is where the system starts to feel personal: it remembers what you generated last week and won't suggest the same meals or similar dishes again, so you can see the variety tracking in action. You come back for plan two with a week of real feedback — a recipe that was harder than expected, a side dish nobody ate, a night that needed to be faster — and you see how the app responds when you adjust your profile or logistics.

One other thing the second run tends to surface: families often discover they have more food preferences than they realized once everything is written down in one place. The first plan gets the basics right. The second plan gets it right for your household.

Why is a credit card required to start the trial?

The trial gives you two full-quality plans, including live recipe sourcing and the full agent pipeline. That costs real compute on our end, so we ask for a card upfront to ensure the trial is used by people genuinely considering the app. Your card is not charged during the trial period.

Can I get more than one trial?

No — the free trial is available once per person. Creating multiple accounts to access additional trial plans is prohibited under our Terms of Service.

What does $7/month include?

Full access to the app — generate as many plans as your household needs each month, with all 16 agents, real recipe sourcing, grocery list, and calendar export included. No per-plan fees on top of the subscription.

What if I don't use it every week?

Your subscription is billed monthly regardless of how many plans you generate. Unused plan generations don't roll over and aren't credited. If you're planning to use MealsAIQ only occasionally, the pay-per-plan option may be a better fit.

How do I cancel?

You can cancel anytime through your account settings or by emailing [email protected]. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period — you keep access until then. We don't offer prorated refunds for partial months.

What's your refund policy?

If you're unsatisfied with your first subscription charge, contact us within 7 days and we'll refund it — as long as you've generated no more than one plan since that charge. After 7 days or more than one plan, payments are non-refundable. See the full policy in our Terms of Service.

What is the pay-per-plan option?

Instead of a monthly subscription, you can purchase individual plan generations for $3 each. Each credit gives you one complete meal plan — same quality as the subscription. You buy credits when you want them, and use them when you're ready.

Think of it this way: you've already done the work of setting up your family profile — your household's restrictions, preferences, and dislikes are all saved. Pay-per-plan means you can put that profile to use whenever it makes sense for you, even if that's not every week. No subscription anxiety, no unused months — just a plan when you need one.

Is this a subscription?

No. Pay-per-plan is a one-time purchase — no recurring charge, no automatic renewal. You will never be automatically converted to a monthly subscription based on credit purchases. If you want to switch to monthly, you can do so at any time through your account settings.

Do plan credits expire?

Credits are valid for 12 months from the date of purchase. Unused credits after 12 months may be forfeited.

Which option is better — monthly or pay-per-plan?

If you plan meals most weeks, the monthly subscription at $7/month works out to less than $2 per plan. If you meal plan occasionally — once or twice a month, or just want to use it without committing to a recurring charge — pay-per-plan at $3/credit gives you the same quality with no ongoing commitment.