The workbench for your recipe files.
Cook Editor is a free desktop app for your .cook files — write, preview, plan, and report across your whole collection. CookBot, the built-in AI, does the busywork: imports, weekly plans, library-wide edits — every change a diff you approve.
Write in plain Cooklang
Syntax highlighting, inline validation, and autocomplete for ingredients
and cookware. Your recipes stay as .cook text files —
diffable, git-friendly, future-proof.
Beautiful preview. Shopping list included.
One click turns your .cook file into a scaled, chip-tagged recipe view.
Select multiple recipes and Cook Editor builds a combined shopping list,
grouped by aisle.
Meal plans in a single file
.menu files link recipes across days and meals. Scale by household size,
see the week at a glance, and let the shopping list flow from the plan.
servings: 2
time: 25 min
Preheat the #oven{180°C}
Mix @flour{200%g} with
@eggs{3} and
@whole milk{250%ml}.
Bake for ~{25%minutes}.
Plain text files. Yours forever.
Every recipe and menu is a text file on your disk. No database. No lock-in. Readable in any editor in fifty years.
- Protein 31%
- Fat 28%
- Carbs 41%
Reports that judge the week
Render any recipe or a whole .menu plan through a template: macros, calories per person per day, allergens with sources, cost. Define targets — say, 35% protein — and the report checks the plan against them. Standard templates run on your own data for free; the hosted nutrition functions come with Cook Pro.
Built to be extended.
Cook Editor runs on the VS Code extension engine — so it bends to how you work.
Plugins
Cook Editor runs VS Code extensions. We’ve just opened a plugin marketplace — install community plugins in a click, or build your own with the VS Code Extension API you already know. It’s early days, and we’re looking for the first authors.
Your templates, your metrics
Reports are plain Jinja templates — write your own for cost breakdowns, recipe cards, CSV exports, or point them at your own local nutrition datastore. Right-click a .cook file, pick a template, done.
CookBot, built in
The AI assistant lives in a sidebar. It pulls in recipes and menus from your collection to answer questions, imports recipes from URLs, and drafts meal plans — then closes the loop: when a report shows the week missing your targets, CookBot adjusts the plan until the check passes. It writes to your files only with your approval. Included with Cook Pro.
- Your files stay on your disk. CookBot only reads what you choose to share in the conversation — never your full collection.
- Every change is a diff you approve. Nothing is written to disk until you click accept.
- Open source. The editor and the CookBot integration are public on GitHub — inspect how prompts and files are handled.
Edit on your laptop.
Cook from your phone.
Cook Editor plays nicely with the Cooklang apps for iPhone and Android. Your collection and shopping list stay in sync, so you can tick items off at the store while someone else preps at home.
Simple pricing.
Cook Editor
- The editor & mobile apps — free
- Recipe preview and scaling
- Shopping lists by aisle
-
.menumeal plans - Works with iOS & Android apps
Cook Pro
Cancel anytime. Pay monthly — no annual lock-in.
- Everything in Cook Editor
- CookBot AI — plans your week, edits across your library
- Recipe import from any URL
- Nutrition in reports — macros, calories, allergens
- CookBot tunes plans against your targets
Cancel anytime
Things people ask before signing up
Where do my recipes go when I use CookBot?
.cook files stay on your local disk. When you ask CookBot a question, only the specific file content you reference is sent to the AI provider for processing — never your full collection. Cook MD doesn't store conversations on our servers, and what you send isn't used to train the AI provider's models. Every change CookBot suggests is shown as a diff and only written to disk after you accept it.
Can I cancel anytime?
How do I pay? Which cards work?
Why a subscription for a desktop app?
What happens to my recipes if I stop paying?
.cook and .menu files are plain text on your disk — they keep working in any text editor, in Cook Editor itself, and on the mobile apps. You only lose the CookBot AI features.