Gustus

The problem

First up: this one wasn’t work-related, it was personal. I found the low-FODMAP apps out there were basically clinical databases. They’d tell me what I could and couldn’t eat, but they didn’t know my specific intolerances, what was in my fridge, or what I’d already cooked that week. So cooking on a restricted diet turned into constant cross-referencing: is this safe, in this portion, with these swaps? Whilst cursing my own body, I found a couple of friends were going through the same thing. That’s roughly when I knew we’d hit middle age.

The approach

So instead of a static database, I built Gustus around Claude as the recipe engine. It knows my dietary profile, intolerances and dislikes, checks what’s in my fridge and what I’ve cooked recently, and writes a recipe for me in seconds, with FODMAP notes and swaps built in. I designed the safety rules around low-FODMAP, since that’s what my doctor recommended, but it works just as well for vegetarian, vegan or gluten-free. It’s a mobile-first app you can install on your phone, something I’d actually glance at while cooking.

How it works

I built a clean app (a React, Vite and Tailwind front end) on top of a server that talks to Claude on my behalf, so the AI access stays locked down and can’t be misused by anyone poking around. Every recipe comes back in a consistent, predictable format, so it always renders properly. And if anything ever goes wrong, it quietly retries rather than showing an error. Everyone’s profile, pantry and history is kept private to them alone.

The result

I open Gustus, tell it what I want, and a tailored recipe lands in seconds. I can scale the servings, tweak it in plain English (“make it spicier”, “no dairy”), save it to my history, and cook along step-by-step. The demo here is the real app running on a fictional profile and pantry, generate a recipe, browse the kitchen, or check out the cooking badges. The broader plan is to actually launch it, then see how much of its own marketing I can automate, and let it rip.