AI Assistants (Claude & ChatGPT)

Recipe Saint connects to AI assistants through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Once connected, your assistant can search over a million recipes, save the ones you like, write new recipes into your account, plan menus, and build shopping lists — all in plain conversation, all under permissions you approve.

What your assistant can do

  • Search — "Find me a weeknight pad thai" uses the same search as the site, including filters
  • Save recipes — "Save the second one" bookmarks it with precise AI-extracted ingredients
  • Write recipes — "Turn this into a recipe in my account" creates a recipe under My Recipes, labeled with the assistant's name so you always know where it came from
  • Plan menus — build a Thanksgiving dinner or a week of training meals as a menu of saved and authored recipes
  • Build shopping lists — "Put the ingredients for the whole menu on a shopping list", with quantities

Connect Claude

  1. In Claude (claude.ai or the desktop app), open Settings → Connectors
  2. Click Add custom connector
  3. Paste: https://www.recipesaint.com/api/mcp
  4. Click Connect — you'll be sent to Recipe Saint to sign in
  5. Review the permissions and click Connect on the consent screen

Want more hand-holding? There's a full step-by-step Claude walkthrough with troubleshooting.

Connect ChatGPT

ChatGPT calls these custom plugins (available on Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu plans, on the web app):

  1. At chatgpt.com, click Plugins in the left sidebar (not the Plugins section in Settings)
  2. Click Add → Create MCP App
  3. Enter https://www.recipesaint.com/api/mcp as the server URL with OAuth authentication, tick the risk acknowledgement, and click Create
  4. Authorize with your Recipe Saint account when prompted

The full ChatGPT walkthrough covers each step in detail.

Permissions

When you connect, Recipe Saint shows exactly what the assistant may do — searching, reading and changing recipes, shopping lists, and menus are each separate permissions. The assistant only gets what you approve, and you can disconnect at any time from your assistant's settings.

Recipes an assistant creates are marked with its name in your Recipe Management dashboard, so your own recipes and assistant-written ones are always distinguishable.

Prefer an API token?

Developers and power users can skip OAuth and connect any MCP client with a personal API token from Account → API Tokens, sent as an Authorization: Bearer header. The token's permission checkboxes control what the client can do. Details in the developer documentation.

Related Topics

Recipe Search Connect Claude