Designing a Meal Planner That Thinks the Way You Cook
Product Design · AI-Assisted Development · UX Strategy
I designed and built Thymeline, an AI-powered meal planning app that turns a dreaded weekly chore into something that actually works the way you want it to.
Role
Product designer, feature author, UX strategist
Tools
Claude Code
Focus
UX design, feature briefs, AI prompt design, interaction flows, user testing
The Challenge
Meal planning is one of those tasks that sounds simple but eats up real time every week. Browsing recipes and cross-referencing what you've recently made takes up valuable mental space while you try to convince yourself that this is what you want to eat this week. Then there's the grocery list, sorting through each recipe and figuring out the ingredient overlap.
Most meal planning apps treat this like a scheduling problem, but to me, it should be a seamless conversation where the app understands your preferences, remembers what you've cooked, and helps you think through the week the way you actually do in your head.
The Opportunity
If I could combine a well-organized recipe box with AI that actually understands how someone plans meals, respecting seasonal ingredients, recently made recipes, what ingredients could go to waste, and even free-text requests like "I'm feeling Italian this week," I could build a tool that gives back hours every week and bring the joy back into meal planning.
The Approach
I designed Thymeline from the user experience first, dreaming up detailed feature capabilities, then partnering with Claude Code to bring each feature to life.
Start With the Brief, Not the Build
For every feature, I described the user story, and worked with Claude to bring my vision to life, ensuring everything was covered in a brief: the UI behavior, edge cases, and test cases. These briefs were design documents from the user's perspective: what does this feel like to use? Where will someone get confused? What should happen when things go wrong?
Design an AI That Plans Like a Person
The core of Thymeline is the "Help Me Plan" flow, which is a two-step process where the user sets up their week, gets AI-generated meal suggestions, and confirms their plan. I designed this to feel natural, with the least amount of typing and clicking but still maximum configurability. The setup screen asks friendly questions and simple choices. You can swap, skip, pick from your own recipe box, or type "tacos" and let the AI find the best match.
Behind the scenes, the AI considers your recently made preferences, recipe type caps, seasonal rules, and recent cooking history. It's trained to think like the users, making a meal plan they're sure to love.
Build With Claude Code, Stay in the Design Seat
I used Claude Code as my development partner through a structured workflow: an Architect agent produced technical specs, a Writer agent implemented the code, and a Reviewer agent verified the implementation matched the spec. This let me stay focused on design decisions and user experience while Claude Code handled the engineering execution.
While Claude wrote the code and guided me through deployment, I tested every flow and continued to ask for edits when features didn't initially work as I expected them to: for example, grocery list deduplication logic, tag taxonomy refinements, and cook mode timer behavior. I spent weeks obsessing over the details and constantly requesting feature updates and additions to ensure the app functioned smoothly throughout as many edge cases as I could discover.
Iterate on the Details That Matter
The features that make Thymeline work are the small decisions that stack up. Cook mode highlights the ingredients for each step so you don't have to scroll back. The grocery list generation deduplicates intelligently, merging "2 cloves garlic" and "3 cloves garlic, minced" into one line item. My preference system lets you say "no more than 2 comfort meals a week" and "more sheet pan meals" so the Planner suggest what you'd actually like.
What I Built
Thymeline is a full-featured web app with real depth behind the clean interface:
Recipe Box
Import recipes from URLs or JSONs, filter by tags, search with AI, edit with natural language.
Smart Planning
AI suggestions based on your preferences, history, and what's in season. Swap, skip, or pick your own.
Grocery Lists
Auto-generated from your plan, deduplicated, organized by store section, shareable to List apps.
Cook Mode
Step-by-step view with timers, ingredient highlighting, and servings scaling.
Discover
Find new recipes and save them directly to your box with one tap.
Household Sharing
Share your recipe box and plans with your household so everyone stays on the same page.
The Result
Thymeline is a working app that I use every week to plan meals for my family. In just a month, it went from an idea to a full product that I now can't live without.
Building Thymeline taught me that the most powerful thing about working with AI isn't writing code faster; it's staying in the design mindset longer. When the engineering execution is handled, you can spend your time where it matters most: understanding the user and getting the experience right.
Thymeline is live at thymeline.ai.