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Hey AI Breakers 👋
It’s 6:30pm. Nobody knows what’s for dinner. Half a bag of spinach is dying in the fridge, and someone’s already opening a delivery app. 🍕
Today, you’ll build Pantry Pilot: a Claude Skill that knows your household, plans the week’s meals around your budget, and turns it all into one shopping list.
✅ A Kitchen Profile with every allergy, dislike, budget, and busy night
✅ A Meal Bank of dishes your household already loves (plus a few new ones to try)
✅ An installable pantry-pilot skill that plans the week in 2 minutes
✅ One shopping list grouped by aisle, with estimated costs
✅ A “Use It Up” mode: snap a photo of your fridge, get dinner ideas
✅ A Monthly Money Check that shows where your food budget actually goes
Let’s build it 👇
🧠 Where the $1,500 Comes From
The average family of four is often estimated to throw away around $1,500 of food a year. Add the “nothing planned, let’s order in” nights and it’s usually a lot more.
Pantry Pilot attacks both leaks:
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🥬 Less waste: meals share ingredients, so that bunch of coriander gets used three times, not once
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🍲 Cook once, eat twice: big dinners turn into planned lunches
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📅 Busy nights covered: 15-minute meals land on the nights you’re slammed, so takeout stops being the default
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🛒 One list, one trip: no more three extra “quick” shop runs a week
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🧠 Zero re-explaining: it already knows your kid won’t eat mushrooms and your partner is dairy-free
The old way: 45 minutes of Sunday scrolling, a messy list, and forgotten ingredients by Wednesday.
The Pantry Pilot way: 40 minutes to set up once, then a full week of meals plus a shopping list in about 2 minutes.
🏡 Prompt #1 → The Household Intake (your Kitchen Profile)
Every good meal plan starts with who’s eating. This prompt interviews you once so you never explain your household again.
The goal:
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Every person, allergy, and hard “no” in one place
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Your real budget, cooking time, and skill level
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Your busy nights and your go-to stores
✅ Use this to create the KITCHEN PROFILE block your skill reads every time.
Prompt:
You are a family meal planner and home cook who helps busy households eat well on a budget. Interview me to build my KITCHEN PROFILE. Ask these 11 questions ONE AT A TIME. Wait for my answer before the next one. If an answer is vague, ask one short follow-up. 1. Who are you cooking for? (Number of adults and kids, and kids' ages) 2. Any allergies or intolerances? List each person separately. Say how serious each one is. 3. Any diets? (Vegetarian, low-carb, halal, high-protein, etc.) Who follows them? 4. What does each person refuse to eat? 5. Which meals do you want planned? (Dinners only, dinners plus lunches, full week) 6. What's your weekly grocery budget, and your currency? 7. How much time can you spend cooking on a normal weeknight? And on weekends? 8. How confident are you in the kitchen? (Beginner / comfortable / love cooking) 9. What equipment do you have? (Oven, air fryer, slow cooker, microwave, blender, etc.) 10. Which nights are usually chaos? (Late meetings, sports, kids' activities) 11. Where do you shop, and what staples do you always keep in stock? After my last answer, output one block titled "KITCHEN PROFILE" with: - Household: people and ages - ALLERGIES (STRICT): each person and allergen, marked serious or mild - Diets: who follows what - Hard no's: per person - Meals to plan: which ones - Budget: per week, with currency - Time: weeknight max, weekend max - Skill level: one word - Equipment: list - Chaos nights: days of the week - Stores: list - Always in stock: pantry staples Keep it under 250 words.
🧠 Tip: on question 2, list everything, even mild ones. The skill treats the allergy list as a hard rule, and it can only protect what you tell it.
📚 Prompt #2 → The Favorites Bank (meals your household will actually eat)
AI meal plans fail when they’re full of recipes nobody asked for. This prompt starts with what already works in your home, then adds a few new ideas to test.
The goal:
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A bank of 15 to 25 meals your household already likes
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Each meal tagged by time, cost, and whether it makes good leftovers
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A handful of new meals that fit your profile, so dinner doesn’t get boring
✅ Use this to create the MEAL BANK block your skill plans from.
Prompt:
You are a home cooking coach who builds reliable weekly rotations for busy families. Here is my KITCHEN PROFILE: [paste your KITCHEN PROFILE from Prompt #1] Here are meals my household already likes: [list 10 to 20 meals you cook often or order often, even rough ones like "tacos", "Friday pasta", "that chicken traybake"] Do this: 1. Clean up my list. Give each meal a clear name. 2. Remove or adapt any meal that breaks my ALLERGIES or hard no's. Tell me what you changed. 3. Tag each meal with: - Time: 15 / 30 / 45+ minutes - Cost: $ / $$ / $$$ (relative to my budget) - Leftovers: YES if it makes a good next-day lunch - Main ingredients: the 3 to 5 that matter for shopping 4. Suggest 8 NEW meals that fit my profile, my skill level, and my equipment. Make at least 3 of them 15-minute meals for chaos nights. Reuse ingredients from my existing meals where possible. 5. Mark the 5 cheapest meals as "BUDGET HEROES". Output one block titled "MEAL BANK" as a simple list: Meal name | Time | Cost | Leftovers | Main ingredients | [NEW] if suggested Keep it scannable. No full recipes yet.
💡 Tip: include the takeout meals you order most. “Chicken tikka from the place down the road” becomes a 30-minute home version, and that’s where a lot of the savings hide. 💸
🛒 Skill #1 → Pantry Pilot (the skill that runs your kitchen)
This is the part that saves the money. One skill with four modes: plan the week, use it up, swap, and recipe.
The goal:
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A weekly plan that fits your budget, your busy nights, and your fridge
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Ingredients shared across meals so nothing goes to waste
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Allergy rules it never breaks
✅ Use this every week, from now on.
Prompt: paste in your claude session, then save everything below as pantry-pilot/SKILL.md
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