Getting Started

A five-step walkthrough, from a fresh install to a planned week of meals.

1. Open a folder

On first launch Cook Editor asks you to pick a folder. Pick an empty folder to start from scratch, or point it at an existing Cooklang collection. You can switch folders any time from File → Open Folder.

Cook Editor watches the folder you opened. Anything you add, rename, or delete from Finder / Explorer / the terminal shows up in the sidebar within a second.

2. Write your first recipe

Create a new file called pancakes.cook. Cooklang is plain text with three special markers — @ingredient, #cookware, and ~timer{duration}:

---
servings: 2
time: 20 min
---

Whisk @flour{200%g}, @eggs{3}, and @whole milk{300%ml} in a #bowl{}.

Heat a #non-stick pan{} until hot. Pour batter and cook ~{2%minutes} per side.

As you type, ingredients and cookware get coloured, amounts are validated, and autocomplete offers items you've used before.

3. Preview and scale

Click the preview toggle in the top right to see the recipe rendered — ingredients split out as chips, instructions laid out cleanly, timers visible at a glance. Change the Scale value and every quantity scales with you.

The preview is for reading and cooking from. The text editor is where you write. Most people work with both open side-by-side.

Scale set to 2: every amount in the ingredient list and the steps doubles. The file itself doesn't change.

4. Build a shopping list

With a recipe preview open, click the cart button in its header. The recipe is added to your Shopping List, which opens in the right sidebar (you can get back to it any time from the cart icon on the right). Cook Editor combines the ingredients, deduplicates where units match, and groups them by aisle. Add more recipes the same way — or a whole .menu from its preview. The Shopping List guide covers scaling, ticking items off, and aisle and pantry files.

If you're heading to the store, open the same list on your phone via the Cook.md mobile apps — they share the collection, so you can tick items off at the shelves.

5. Plan a week

Create a file called my-week.menu. A .menu file is a list of days, each with meal-labelled bullets that reference recipes in your collection:

---
servings: 2
---

==Day 1 (2026-04-21)==

Breakfast: \
- @./Breakfast/Pancakes{2%servings} \
- @filter coffee{1%cup}

Dinner: \
- @./Dinners/Ramen{2%servings}

==Day 2 (2026-04-22)==

Breakfast: \
- @eggs{4} with @toast{2%slices}

Dinner: \
- @./Salads/Caprese{2}

== Snacks ==

- @apples
- @yogurt{2}

Day headers are wrapped in ==. Adding a date in (YYYY-MM-DD) lets Cook Editor recognise it and highlight today's meals. Each meal block starts with a label like Breakfast: followed by - bullets; end every line in the block with a trailing \ (except the last) so the whole meal reads as one step in the preview.

Recipe references use the same @ syntax as ingredients, with a relative path to the .cook file. Standalone ingredient lines like @apples or @eggs{4} work too, so you can capture snacks and one-off items without making a recipe for them.

The preview for a .menu file shows the whole week at a glance and produces a combined shopping list for the plan. If you're cooking for a different household size, scale the menu and every recipe scales with it.