Markdown Import

You can import recipes directly as Markdown files, or import a ZIP archive exported from another Mirepoix installation.

How to import

On your recipes list, tap Add Recipe, then choose From a file. A file picker opens. Add Recipe and From a file are there whether or not the deployment has an Anthropic API key. A key changes only how a messy single file gets read — covered below — not whether you can import files.

Pick one or more .md, .txt, .text, or .zip files. What happens next depends on how many you choose and what kind they are.

A single .md, .txt, or .text file

Pick one text file and Mirabel reads it into a Recipe draft you review before saving — the same draft you’d get by pasting a recipe or giving her a link. It’s a review step, not an instant import: nothing joins your recipes until you open the draft and save it.

A file already in Mirepoix’s recipe format comes back read directly — no AI, and it doesn’t count against your monthly AI allowance. Look it over and save it. A messier file — a recipe copied out of another app, say — still becomes a draft: read with AI when it’s available, or her own plain read when it isn’t, flagged for a careful check. Only when she can’t find a recipe in the file at all does she say so instead of drafting one.

A very large file won’t read as a single recipe. When that happens, paste just the recipe into the chat instead.

Several files at once

Choose more than one .md, .txt, or .text file together and they import right away, one recipe each — no draft, no AI, and no charge against your AI allowance. Each file must use the recipe format and include a # Title heading — a file without one fails to import.

ZIP archives

A .zip file is expected to come from Mirepoix Export. It can contain recipe files, recipe photos, QuickBites, the ingredient catalog, and aisle/category ordering.

You can also assemble a ZIP manually from .md recipe files if you’re migrating from another system.

What happens on import

• Recipes are created or updated based on their title.
• Recipe photos are restored for the recipes the import creates or replaces — one photo per recipe. Imported photos go through the same checks as photos you add in the app, so a bad image in an archive is rejected and reported.
• QuickBites are merged by name. An imported bite updates the one with the same name and adds any that are new, so the bites you already have are kept.
• Categories and tags from front matter are created if they don’t exist.
• Ingredient catalog data in the ZIP replaces existing entries with the same name.
• Category ordering is restored. Your aisle order is filled in only if you haven’t set your own — a customized aisle order is never overwritten.

A single archive can’t be larger than the app’s per-file upload limit (about 10 MB). A kitchen with many photos can produce an export that’s too large to import in one piece for now.

Conflicts

If a recipe with the same title already exists, the imported version replaces it — there’s no merge, the existing recipe is overwritten.

Last updated July 11, 2026