Cooked

A meal planning and cooking timer app written in SwiftUI

Built on SwiftData, CloudKit and FoundationModels (on-device AI).

Copyright 2026 - David James

Overview

Cooked solves a surprisingly tricky kitchen problem: when you're cooking multiple dishes with different cook times, when does each one need to go in? You build a meal plan by adding the foods you're cooking along with how long each takes, and Cooked calculates a personalised schedule telling you exactly when to start each item so they all finish simultaneously.

A built-in on-device AI ingredient databank — powered by Apple's FoundationModels — makes it fast to find and reuse ingredients, with results tailored to your region. Your meal plans sync across devices via CloudKit.

Features

• Meal plan creation — Group multiple cooking items into a single plan.
• Completion schedule — Calculate a start-time schedule for every item in a plan so they all finish cooking at the same moment -- in both relative time ("in 25 min") and absolute time ("8:45 PM").
• On-device AI food bank — Uses Apple's on-device System Language Model to generate a personalised list of ingredients and varieties, favouring foods common in your region.
• Cooking timers — Start a timer from a meal plan and follow step-by-step prompts as each item's start time arrives.
• Food variables — Attach reusable descriptors to cooking items (e.g. "1.7 kg", "large") with autocomplete from previously used values.
• CloudKit sync — Meal plans, food items, and your ingredient bank sync automatically across all your devices.
• iOS & macOS — A single SwiftUI codebase runs natively on mobile and desktop.

How It Works

1. Create a meal plan — Tap "New" and give it an optional name.
2. Add cooking items — Pick an ingredient from your AI-generated food bank (or enter one manually), optionally note a quantity or size, and set the cook time.
3. View the schedule — Cooked works out the start offset for each item relative to the longest cook time and presents a clear, ordered schedule.
4. Start cooking — Hit "Start" and the timer walks you through when to put each item on, ending with a final "Everything done" notification.

Data Model

Profile
└── (settings: regional ingredient preference)

MealPlan ──< CookingItem >── FoodItem
                │                └── FoodGroup (staple / protein / vegetable)
                │                └── Ingredient
                │                      └── Variety
                └── FoodVariable (e.g. "1.7 kg")

• MealPlan — A named collection of cooking items. Total time equals the longest individual cook time.
• CookingItem — One food being cooked: links a FoodItem + optional FoodVariable + a duration.
• FoodItem — A saved food entry referencing an ingredient and optionally a specific variety.
• Ingredient / Variety — The AI-generated food bank. Ingredients belong to a food group; varieties are specific cuts or types (e.g. "Maris Piper potatoes").
• FoodVariable — Reusable descriptors (weight, size, etc.) shared across cooking items.

AI Generation

The ingredient databank is built entirely on-device using Apple's FoundationModels framework.

Generation runs per food group (staples, proteins, vegetables) in separate model sessions to stay within context limits. Each pass provides a growing exclusion list so repeated runs add genuinely new ingredients rather than duplicates.

Sampling strategy:

Pass	Mode	Purpose
First	Greedy	Deterministically captures the most common, obvious ingredients
Subsequent	Nucleus (top-p)	Explores progressively more varied and regional results

Varieties follow the same pattern — once an ingredient exists in the bank, a separate generation step populates its specific varieties.

Requirements

	Minimum
iOS	26.0
macOS	26.0
Xcode	26.0
On-device model	Required for AI ingredient generation

Note: AI generation requires a device with Apple Intelligence / the on-device System Language Model available. The app gracefully falls back to manual ingredient entry if the model is unavailable.

Project Structure

Cooked/
├── CookedApp.swift             # App entry point, SwiftData container setup
├── Model/                      # SwiftData models (Profile, MealPlan, CookingItem, …)
├── Generators/                 # On-device AI generation (ingredients & varieties)
│   └── Tools/                  # Generation helpers (exclusion lists, etc.)
├── Views/                      # SwiftUI views
├── Helpers/                    # Utilities (layout, generation settings, view helpers)
├── Protocols/                  # Shared protocols (TimedItem, FoodContainer, …)
└── Styles/                     # Colours and design tokens