Help & Reference

Mirabel, your kitchen helper

Mirabel is the in-app assistant — a warm, cheerful home cook who’s happy to explain a French technique and just as happy when dinner is a PB&J. She answers your questions about Mirepoix and gives light cooking advice. She can also find your recipes by name, draft a recipe you paste, link, or photograph, propose edits to a recipe you’ve saved, offer to add to your shopping list or your Menu, and suggest tags for a recipe you’ve saved. She never changes your kitchen on her own — nothing changes until you tap or save it yourself. You’ll hear her voice inside her panel; the rest of Mirepoix keeps its plain, matter-of-fact tone.

Where to find her

On a wide screen, Mirabel waits in the bottom-right corner — tap her to open her panel. On a narrow screen, where space is tight, she moves to the top-right corner of the screen instead. Either way, look for the round button with her picture, and tap it to open her panel. Her panel opens with a few starters you can tap — Add a recipe begins the guided add-a-recipe interview, What can you help with? lists what she does, and a sample cooking question shows the kind of thing you can ask. Or type your own in the Message Mirabel box. The box grows as you type, so a longer note stays easy to read. On a computer, press Enter to send and Shift+Enter to start a new line. On a phone or tablet, Return starts a new line — tap the send arrow (↑) to send.

On a wide screen, tap the ⤢ in her header to make her panel bigger — wider, and free to grow taller — so a long conversation has more room. Tap it again to shrink it back. She remembers your choice on that device the next time you open her. On a narrow screen her panel already fills the screen, so there’s no ⤢.

Her reply appears as she writes it. A recipe draft or a set of choices lands just below her words, as one piece. While she’s answering, the send arrow (↑) turns into a stop button (⏹). Tap it to end her answer early and keep what she’s said so far. If you scroll up to read while she’s still going, the view stays put — tap the ↓ button that appears to jump back to her latest. To keep a reply, tap the copy button (⧉) on it — it appears when you point at the reply on a computer, and stays faintly visible on a phone or tablet. If your browser blocks the copy, a small box appears with the text ready to select yourself. And if a reply lands while her panel is closed, a small dot marks her button so you know to look — it clears the moment you open her.

Mirabel’s panel is always there for a kitchen member, whether or not the deployment has an Anthropic API key configured. Someone viewing a published kitchen without being a member of it doesn’t see her button at all — she’s for the people cooking in that kitchen. The key decides which of her abilities are live, not whether she shows up. Without one, the guided add-a-recipe interview still imports from a website, pasted text, or a file, and the meal suggestions still work — but her chat answers, photo import, and the bookmarklet need the key, as does her in-panel offer to set the bookmarklet up. Photo import also needs a Mistral key, for reading the photo. Sharing a link from an Android phone’s Share sheet works without a key too: she reads a shared link the way she reads one from From a website. (That route isn’t available on iPhone or iPad at all — see Import from your browser or by sharing.) On mirepoix.recipes the operator sets it, so everything’s on; a self-hosted deployment without a key has the rest. When an ability needs the key and it isn’t set, Mirabel tells you she isn’t available for that rather than leaving you guessing.

What she can help with

She works only with your own kitchen, and only when you ask. She reads your recipes, your Pantry, your Menu — including which recipes have spent time on it, which is what “forgotten favorites” is built from — your shopping list, and your kitchen’s cooking preferences. Nothing else in your kitchen, and nothing tied to your account. She can offer to add items to your shopping list, saved recipes to your Menu, and tags to a saved recipe; to take saved recipes back off your Menu; to create a QuickBite in a category you already have; and to file a saved recipe under a category you already have. She can’t do any of it on her own — every offer waits for your tap. Everything else she only reads: she can’t change what your Pantry says is on hand, check an item off your list, take a tag off a recipe, delete a recipe or a QuickBite, or add, rename, or delete a category outright — only choose among the ones you already have. And a draft becomes a recipe, and a proposed edit changes a recipe, only when you save it yourself in the recipe editor.

She knows which page you’re on

While you’re chatting, Mirabel knows which page you’re looking at — a recipe, your recipes list, the Menu, your Groceries, or your Pantry. She sees only the page’s type and title — and, on a recipe, its address — never what’s on the page. That’s enough to act on: while you’re viewing a recipe, ask her to edit it without naming it — “make this vegan” changes the one you’re looking at. It goes along with your message, and the Data and privacy page covers it.

What she remembers about your kitchen

What Mirabel remembers is exactly what’s saved under Cooking preferences in Settings — how many people you usually cook for, the diets your kitchen follows, and the ingredients you avoid. There’s no hidden profile behind it: that section is the whole of it, and an owner can see, change, or clear it any time. It’s one of the owner-only parts of Settings, so a member who isn’t an owner doesn’t see it there. A short summary goes along with every message you send her, so her suggestions and drafts fit your kitchen. It doesn’t limit what she can find — a search still turns up every matching recipe you’ve saved.

Mention a preference while you’re chatting — “we’re vegetarian,” “we skip cilantro,” “there are four of us” — and she may offer to save it, with Yes, remember it and No thanks under her question. She offers one preference at a time, and nothing is saved unless you tap Yes, remember it. Tap it and the chat notes Saved to kitchen settings and she answers “Saved — I’ll remember”; tap No thanks and she moves on. The note shows only until you move to another page; the preference itself stays saved. Only a kitchen owner can change settings — if you’re a member, she says so and leaves it to them. To see what’s already saved before you decide, an owner can check Cooking preferences.

An avoided ingredient shapes what she suggests and drafts, and that’s all it does. Nothing in Mirepoix hides or sets aside a recipe because of it. Mirepoix has no allergy setting and doesn’t screen recipes for allergens — read a recipe’s ingredients yourself when it matters to someone’s health.

Her memory of the conversation itself is separate and much shorter — see Your conversation and starting fresh.

Tap a choice she offers

Sometimes Mirabel’s question has just a few clear answers — which recipe you meant, or what to do with a draft next. When it does, she shows the answers as tappable buttons under her question. Tap one to send it as your reply, or ignore the buttons and type your own answer in the Message Mirabel box instead.

Some of those buttons stay live after you tap; others lock. The ones that walk you through adding a recipe stay live — where the recipe is coming from under Add a recipe, and the other ways in when an import doesn’t go through. Your pick is highlighted, nothing switches off, and tapping a different button moves the pick there. Opened the photo picker and thought better of it? Tap I’ll paste the text instead.

Those buttons settle into a fixed record — your pick highlighted, the rest dimmed, all switched off — as soon as changing your mind would come too late: you’ve sent her a message, a new set of choices has taken over, or you typed an answer instead of tapping.

The questions she asks you in the middle of a conversation lock on the first tap: which recipe you meant, Yes, remember it or No thanks, Yes, add them or No thanks, Yes, take them off or No thanks, Yes, create it or No thanks. So do two others — Import this recipe or Just asking about it on a bare link, and the choices under a finished draft. Each of those sends her something or changes your kitchen, so there’s no taking it back. (Change something under a draft sends the next thing you type as the change you want.)

Neither marking outlasts a page change. Move to another page, or come back to the conversation later, and her mid-conversation questions look untapped again; the walk-through buttons aren’t there at all, because they’re interface rather than part of the conversation she keeps. The exception is a draft you’ve saved a recipe from: its choices come back as a switched-off Saved, since Mirepoix keeps a note of the save.

Add a recipe, step by step

To add a recipe with Mirabel, tap the Add a recipe starter when her panel opens. She asks one question — Let’s add a recipe. Where is it coming from? — and offers a set of choices:

You can also skip the buttons and tell her what you want in the box — the choices are a shortcut, never the only way. Prefer dragging? Drop a file straight onto her panel and she sorts it the same way — importing a backup or reading a photo.

The website, photo, paste, and single-file sources all lead to the same draft you review and save, described in the sections below. A ZIP archive, or several files chosen at once, skips the draft — those recipes import right away, and the result is noted in the chat.

The Add Recipe button on your recipes list doesn’t open this interview. It opens a sheet of its own, which reads a link, pasted text, or a file for free without her — see Adding a recipe. That sheet sends two things her way: From a photo opens her photo picker, and an image you pick there goes to her photo reader. A link or text it couldn’t read cleanly it can read with AI itself, with Read it with AI, without her. A recipe the sheet reads, cleanly or with AI, goes straight to the editor without passing through her chat, so it gets none of the choices she offers under a draft, such as Use AI instead. For those, bring the recipe to her through this interview.

Import a recipe by pasting it

Ask her for the paste step first: tap her Add a recipe starter and pick I’ll paste the text, or tap Copy & paste it yourself when she offers it after an import that didn’t go through. She asks you to paste the recipe below, and what you paste next goes straight into an import. She reads it herself first, sending nothing to Anthropic, and adds a Recipe draft card to the chat, with the recipe’s title and a Review and save button. While she reads, a brief Reading that recipe… line appears. With the draft, she tells you it’s pieced together from the text you gave her. She also points out anything to double-check — a title she wasn’t sure about, or ingredient lines that didn’t parse cleanly. She turns to AI only when the text is too jumbled to read cleanly, or you ask her to redo it with AI (see Use AI instead below). A recipe she reads directly is free — it doesn’t count against your monthly AI allowance.

You can also just paste a recipe into the Message Mirabel box out of the blue and ask her to import it, and she will. That takes a different route: your message reaches her the way any message does, so the recipe text goes to Anthropic to generate her reply, and the draft she builds from it is an AI import — there’s no reading-it-herself step, and it draws on your monthly AI allowance. Going through the paste step is what gets you the free read, with nothing sent to Anthropic. Your conversation and starting fresh sets out the difference in full.

You can paste a fair amount in one go — a full recipe plus your request fits comfortably. If you paste much more than a single recipe, she’ll ask you to trim it down. She works best with a focused selection, so when you copy from a web page, try to leave out navigation links and comments.

If the recipe text is already in the recent conversation, ask her to import that recipe. She reads the recent chat along with your request, so you don’t have to paste the same text again. That one is always an AI import — the text she’s working from is the conversation, which has already gone to Anthropic.

If the text you paste names a source, or if you tell her where the recipe came from, she can include that source in the draft’s footer. She won’t guess at a source when one isn’t provided.

Once the draft lands, Mirabel offers a set of choices under it:

Every draft is the full recipe as written unless you condense it. Where AI does the reading, a substitution the recipe offers and an ingredient it marks optional arrive as fields — a substitute row under the ingredient, and the line’s own optional mark — rather than as a note in the footer, and the same holds for an edit she proposes to a recipe you’ve already saved. A swap for only part of an ingredient, like semolina for half the flour, stays a footer note in the recipe’s own words. An AI import leaves out remarks of her own about the source, such as what it doesn’t include or where the full recipe is. It also leaves off tags the page doesn’t back up, such as a cooking method its instructions never use or a cuisine it never names. A draft is a starting point, not a finished recipe — check the title, ingredients, quantities, and steps in the editor before you save it.

When it looks right, tap Review and save on the card. Her panel closes and the new-recipe editor opens with her draft filled in — the same full-page editor you’d use to type a recipe yourself. Check it over, change anything you like, and tap Save to kitchen. Nothing goes into your kitchen until you tap Save to kitchen. Until you open it in the editor, the draft lives only in the chat, and tapping Clear conversation discards it along with the rest of the conversation.

Once you’ve saved a recipe from a draft, the choices under that draft change. In their place, the chat says This draft is already in your kitchen. over a single, switched-off Saved button. Condense it first, Use AI instead, and Change something aren’t offered for it any more. She stops treating it as the draft you’re working on, too — it no longer goes along with your later messages as one. It’s a saved recipe now, so to change it, see Edit a saved recipe. The draft’s card stays in the conversation, with its Review and save button still on it. A draft she makes after that is a new one, with its own choices.

The choices have changed by the time you next open her panel. On another tab or device, they change once the conversation reloads there.

If your browser won’t let her hand the draft to the editor — private browsing does that, and so does a full storage quota — she says so in the chat rather than leaving the tap to do nothing. The draft is safe in your conversation for a few days, so opening it from an ordinary window works.

Import a recipe from a photo

Got a recipe on paper — a cookbook page, an index card, a handwritten note? Tap the camera button (Attach a recipe photo) in her panel to pick a photo or take one. Add it, ask her to import it, and she builds a Recipe draft card from it. You don’t have to type anything — a photo on its own is enough to import.

Photo import is a beta, and its card says Recipe draft · beta. Mistral AI, an outside AI service, reads the text on the photo, and the draft is built from exactly the words it read. Nothing is rewritten or filled in, so a number it misread stays misread until you fix it. It reads best from a clear, flat photo of the whole page.

You can attach up to 10 photos at once — they’re read in order and combined into one recipe, so a recipe spread across two pages works. Each photo is shrunk in your browser, and its camera and location data are stripped before it’s sent. The photos are held just long enough to build the draft, then deleted — they aren’t kept. Data and privacy says what goes to Mistral AI, and to Typesafe AI, which helps sort the lines that were read into a title, ingredients and steps.

Lines to check. Under the draft’s title, the card lists any lines worth checking against your photo. Most quote the line, and each says why: it runs off the edge of the photo, its amount may have been misread, part of it was hard to read, or it isn’t clear whether it’s an ingredient, a step or something else. When you send several photos and one can’t be read at all, the list says which one, since its part of the recipe is missing.

A page that can’t be sorted. When the text is read but can’t be sorted into a recipe, you still get a draft. It’s titled Recipe from a photo, with every line that was read in its steps, so move the ingredients into place in the editor. When nothing on the photos can be read at all, there’s no draft, and she tells you so. A sharper, flatter shot of the whole page is the thing to try.

What a photo draft leaves out, for now. Ingredient groups and numbered steps aren’t kept yet: the ingredients arrive as one list and the method as one step, with a heading like For the sauce among its paragraphs. A source printed on the page isn’t carried into the draft. A note or story printed above the ingredients, like a headnote, is usually left out too, so copy it into the editor if you want to keep it. Anything you type along with the photo isn’t added to the draft either — the draft holds only what was read from the photo.

From there it’s the same as any draft, with one difference: she doesn’t change a photo draft in the same message that imported it, so ask for changes once it has landed. Ask in plain words or use the choices under it, then tap Review and save to open it in the editor. Nothing is saved until you tap Save to kitchen there. A photo import draws on your kitchen’s monthly AI allowance.

To import a photo without her, copy the recipe’s text out of it with your device’s text recognition and paste it into the Add Recipe sheet instead. See Adding a recipe.

Paste the address of a recipe page into the Message Mirabel box and ask her to import it. She opens the page — a brief Fetching that page… line shows while she does — and turns it into a Recipe draft card, same as a pasted recipe.

If you paste just a web address into the box on its own — nothing else — Mirabel checks what you meant first. She asks Import this recipe or Just asking about it, so a link you only wanted to ask about doesn’t turn into an import.

She opens the link you paste, and nothing else. She won’t follow other links on the page or go looking for one you didn’t send.

When a draft comes from a link, she can include that page as the source in the recipe footer. If the page itself names an author or publication, she can use that name; otherwise she uses the name the site gives itself, or its address when the page gives none.

A link goes the same two ways text does. Tap Import this recipe on the choice above, or pick From a website under her Add a recipe starter, and she tries to read the page herself first, sending nothing to Anthropic; she turns to AI only when the page is too messy to read cleanly. A page she reads directly is free — it doesn’t count against your monthly AI allowance. Wrap the link in a sentence instead — “can you import this for me, https://…” — and it’s an ordinary message, so your message goes to Anthropic and the page she opens is read with AI. Either way she opens the page from Mirepoix’s server, not from your browser.

When a page carries its recipe in a form she can read cleanly, the draft comes out more faithful to the original. A page written in parts — ingredients under Crust and Filling, instructions that name the same two — comes back as a step per part, each with its own ingredients. Reading it directly, she also says where the draft came from — the site’s own recipe data, or the page text. She flags anything to double-check. See Sections on the draft for what a direct read brings over.

A YouTube link works too. Paste the address of a video and she reads the video’s description — the text under the video, where the recipe usually lives. She doesn’t watch or listen to the video, so a recipe that’s only spoken on screen won’t come through. When she can’t find a recipe in the description, she tells you plainly: “Sorry, I can’t find a recipe on that page. If you have the recipe text, paste it into the chat and I’ll build the draft from it.” Copy the recipe out of the description and paste it in, and she’ll build the draft from that.

When a link’s page carries a photo in its recipe data, she brings that photo over too, for you to keep or drop while you review the draft — see a photo that came in with an import.

She can only open public recipe pages over the web. If a link won’t open — it’s private, it’s not a web page, or the page is too large — she’ll say so and suggest copying the recipe text into the chat instead.

Some pages behind a login or paywall hand her a different recipe than the one you linked — a featured recipe in place of the one you wanted. When she spots that the page’s recipe doesn’t match your link, she tells you instead of drafting the wrong one. She’ll point you to the import bookmarklet, which reads the page in your own logged-in browser, or you can paste the recipe text into the chat instead.

Other sites block automated readers entirely — a protection many popular recipe sites use. When a site turns her away like that, she can’t open the page at all. She’ll tell you the site blocks automated readers and point you to the same two fixes: the import bookmarklet, which reads the page in your own logged-in browser, or pasting the recipe text into the chat.

A site can also ask automated readers to leave a page alone without blocking anyone — it says so in a file called robots.txt. Mirepoix reads that file before opening any page and honors it. When a rule there covers the page you linked, Mirabel doesn’t open it, and tells you the site asked her not to. That’s a stated preference rather than a locked door, but the fixes are the same two: the import bookmarklet or pasting the recipe text. Web fetching covers what Mirepoix sends when it opens a page, and how a site can turn it away.

From there it’s the same as any draft: ask for changes in plain words, then tap Review and save to open it in the editor. Nothing is saved until you tap Save to kitchen there.

Import from your browser or by sharing

Two more ways to start an import without pasting anything into the chat.

From your browser, use the import bookmarklet — a button you drag to your bookmarks bar once, then click on a recipe page Mirepoix can’t open itself, like anything behind a login or paywall. Settings has the setup and the rest of that flow.

On an Android phone, share a recipe link to Mirepoix. Once you’ve added Mirepoix to your home screen, it shows up in the system Share sheet. Share a link from your browser or another app, pick Mirepoix, and she opens on your recipes with a confirm card like the bookmarklet’s — tap Import and she reads the page the way Import this recipe does: herself first, sending nothing to Anthropic, and with AI only when the page is too messy to read cleanly. A page she reads directly is free — it doesn’t count against your monthly AI allowance.

This doesn’t work on iPhone or iPad. Safari doesn’t let an installed web app join the system Share sheet, so Mirepoix won’t be one of the choices there no matter how it’s installed. To bring in a link on an iPhone, paste it into Add Recipe, or paste it to Mirabel and tap Import this recipe. Either way the page is read for free first.

Either way, you get the full recipe as written. The rest is like any draft: ask for changes in plain words, tap Condense it first if you want the trimmed version, then tap Review and save to open it in the editor. Nothing is saved until you tap Save to kitchen there.

When an import doesn’t go through

If a page won’t open or an import can’t finish, Mirabel doesn’t leave you stuck — she lays out the ways that still work: Copy & paste it yourself, Try a photo, From a file, and I’ll type it myself. With a mouse or trackpad she also offers a way to get the recipe off a page she can’t reach: Set up the grab-it button, an in-panel walkthrough for dragging the import bookmarklet onto your bookmarks bar. There’s no touch-device equivalent — on a phone or tablet, copy the recipe text and paste it to her instead.

Hand her a text file she can’t read as one recipe — it’s too long, or there’s no recipe in it to find — and she says so plainly instead of saving a bad draft, and points you back to pasting just the recipe.

Some pastes and pages hold no recipe of their own, like a video description that only links to the full recipe. When she reads one of those with AI, she tells you she couldn’t find a recipe rather than building a draft from it. Give her the link to the full recipe instead.

If the trouble is your monthly AI allowance running out, her AI choices step aside and the ones that don’t need her — a file, or typing it yourself — stay.

On a deployment with no Anthropic API key at all — a different situation, with the same visible shape — the options that need AI drop out here too. Copy & paste it yourself, From a file, and I’ll type it myself stay, since none of them needs Anthropic’s AI. The paste and file reads can still send ingredient lines to Typesafe AI, an outside AI service, as Data and privacy describes; I’ll type it myself has no import read to send. Try a photo and Set up the grab-it button don’t appear.

If a plain question can’t go through

Sometimes a question doesn’t go through — a dropped connection, or a hiccup reaching her AI service. When that happens, a Try again button appears under her reply. If your question never reached her, or she couldn’t finish answering it, tapping it resends the same question, so you don’t have to retype it.

If the connection dropped while she was already answering, Try again picks her answer back up instead of asking again. She keeps working while your connection is down, so the question isn’t answered twice or counted twice against your monthly AI allowance.

When trying again wouldn’t get you anywhere — her AI features aren’t set up on this deployment, your kitchen has used up its monthly AI allowance, or her AI service refused what you sent — she says so in the chat, and no button appears, since sending the same thing again would land the same way. When her AI read of a recipe is refused, she asks for a shorter or plainer copy of it. When a message to her is refused, she says the AI service turned it down and that it’s on us, not you — there’s nothing for you to fix.

If she took your question but couldn’t finish answering it, moving to another page still shows her error message under it, but without Try again. A question that never reached her, or that she turned away before starting, isn’t kept, so it doesn’t come back at all. Either way, ask again if you still want an answer.

Edit a saved recipe

Ask Mirabel to change a recipe you’ve already saved — “make the pancakes gluten-free,” “halve the recipe,” “add a step to preheat the oven.” When you’re on a recipe’s page, “make this vegan” is enough — she edits the recipe you’re viewing. Anywhere else, name the recipe so she can find it. While she works, a brief Reworking that recipe… line appears.

Ask her to condense one the same way — “condense my tomato sauce recipe,” “give me the expert version of the pancakes” — and she proposes the trimmed, expert-shorthand version as the same kind of edit, no pasting required. While she works, a brief Condensing that recipe… line appears.

She proposes the change as a Proposed edit card in the chat, with the recipe’s title and a Review in editor button. She doesn’t touch the recipe. Until you open it in the editor, the proposal lives only in the chat.

Tap Review in editor and her panel closes. The recipe’s edit page opens with her version filled in where the recipe’s own text would be — the same full-page editor you use to edit a recipe yourself. Check it over, change anything you like, and tap Save to kitchen. Every Proposed edit card keeps its button, however old, so you can go back to an earlier proposal too.

Nothing changes until you tap Save to kitchen in the editor. The save is yours: the recipe’s history records it as an ordinary updated version, not one marked via Mirabel. Once her version is open there, the editor keeps it as your private draft, the same as any edit in progress: leave without saving and it’s waiting the next time you open that recipe’s editor, and Discard draft throws it away. See Saving as you go.

If your browser won’t let her hand the edit to the recipe’s edit page — private browsing does that, and so does a full storage quota — she says so in the chat rather than leaving the tap to do nothing. Nothing on your recipe has changed, and her version is safe in your conversation for a few days.

If the recipe has changed since she read it, Save to kitchen won’t write her version over the newer one. It stops with “Someone saved a newer version of this recipe while you were editing,” and offers Load newest version and Copy my edits as text — the same stop the editor makes whenever a recipe changes under you (see Picking up where you left off). To start over from the recipe as it is now, ask her to redo the edit; she reads the recipe afresh each time.

A package like 2 cans, 14.5 oz each stays in her version. When her version still counts that ingredient in the same kind of container, the line keeps the size of each one at her count — scale it up to 3 cans and each is still 14.5 oz. When her edit measures that line another way, renames it, or uses a different container, the package doesn’t carry over — that’s the change she made. The same goes when she reworks or condenses a draft, such as an imported one.

She won’t propose an edit at all, or a condensed version, when a substitute ingredient carries a package or a prep note of its own. Her version would leave that detail out, and saving it would erase it. So she tells you why instead, and points you to the editor, where you can make the change yourself and the detail stays put.

Editing a recipe this way counts against your monthly AI allowance, the same as an import.

Ask what to make

Not sure what to cook? Ask Mirabel — “what should I make this week?” — and she suggests recipes from your own kitchen. She draws on three angles: forgotten favorites you’ve cooked before but not in a while, your newest recipes, and quick wins where every ingredient is already on hand. While she looks, a brief Looking at what you cook… line appears.

The quickest way in is the What should we make this week? chip in Mirabel’s panel. Tap it and she opens straight into the question with three tappable choices — forgotten favorites, what’s new, and quick wins — and each recipe she shows has an Add to Menu button. Typing your own question works too; she pulls from the same suggestions either way.

Her suggestions come from recipes you’ve saved, the weeks each recipe has spent on your menu, and — for quick wins — what’s on hand in your Pantry. Your Cooking preferences ride along with your message and steer what she picks, but every saved recipe stays in the running — nothing is set aside before she looks. She only suggests: nothing joins your Menu until you tap — Add to Menu on a card she shows, or Yes, add them on an offer she makes.

Ask what’s on hand, on the menu, or on the list

Ask Mirabel about the rest of your kitchen and she looks it up rather than guessing. Three things are open to her:

Ask about a handful of ingredients at once — she checks up to ten names in one go.

On hand doesn’t mean counted. Mirepoix never tracks how much of an ingredient you have. The Pantry tracks when to ask about an ingredient again, so “you have butter” means butter’s reminder clock is still resting, or that you’ve set butter to Don’t ask — not that anyone looked in the fridge. She won’t give you an amount, because there isn’t one to give.

If something’s on hand and already on your shopping list, she says so rather than a flat “you have it” — you marked it to buy, and she’ll answer with that in mind, something like “you had some, but it’s on your list.”

An ingredient a selected recipe or QuickBite calls for is already on your Pantry shelf, so she knows it even if you’ve never touched it — she’ll answer about it the way the Pantry does, which for something with no reminder set yet means it’s still to check, and for something set to Don’t ask means it’s on hand.

If the Pantry has no record of an ingredient at all, she says that instead, and it isn’t the same as being out of it. It means nothing has put that ingredient on your kitchen’s radar yet: nothing on your Menu calls for it, and nobody has put it on a list or given it a reminder by hand. Water, tap water, and ice are the exception: they never show on the Pantry, and she counts them as on hand.

What she calls running low is the same two groups your Pantry shows: the rows still to check, whose clock has come due, and the rows already On the list. An item set to Don’t ask isn’t in it unless it’s on your list. The Pantry shelf is built from what’s on your Menu, so an ingredient no selected recipe or QuickBite calls for won’t turn up in that answer — ask about it by name instead.

On the shopping list she sees names, not amounts. An item you’ve checked off is still on the list, marked as bought, until it drops off an hour later. Her Pantry answers count it as bought from the moment you check it off, as the Pantry does.

Reading changes nothing on its own. She can’t change what your Pantry says is on hand, check an item off your list, or take anything off your Menu — those stay yours, from the Pantry, Groceries, or Menu page. What she can do is offer to add, below.

Ask what you still need for a recipe

Ask Mirabel what one of your saved recipes takes to cook — “what do I need to buy for the chili?”, “can I make the pancakes tonight?” — and she works it out against your Pantry and your shopping list instead of reading the recipe back to you. While she looks, a brief Working out what you still need… line appears in the chat.

Her answer comes back in the chat. She’s told three numbers — what’s left to buy, what’s missing but already on your list, and how many the recipe needs from the store in all — so she can tell one from another instead of speaking a bare count. She also gets the names of what’s left to buy, and of any optional ingredients you’re short of, as two separate lists. Each list stops at the first twenty names; if one runs longer she’s told it was trimmed, and asked to say so rather than pass it off as the whole list.

She works out what’s on hand the same way a Menu row’s Missing/Probably have breakdown does, so “on hand” means what it means there — a Pantry row whose reminder clock hasn’t come due yet, whether you bought it or answered Have it, or one you’ve set to Don’t ask — unless it’s on your shopping list and not yet checked off. An ingredient your Pantry has no record of counts as one you still need.

It counts only what you’d buy. Water, tap water, and ice never appear here, so this count can be lower than the recipe’s own ingredient list. An ingredient set to Don’t ask on the Pantry is still counted, as one you have on hand, and one your kitchen set to be left out of nutrition is counted like any other.

What’s already on your list isn’t counted as left to buy. An ingredient you’re short of that’s already on your shopping list goes in the second number instead, so she can tell you it’s covered rather than offer it again. Anything that shares its row there counts too — lemon zest and a lemon are one line on your list, so either one being on it covers both.

Optional ingredients are kept apart. Anything the recipe marks optional stays out of all three numbers, and only reaches her in that separate list. An optional you have on hand, or have already put on your list, isn’t in it.

She offers to add what’s left. When something’s left to buy, she tells you what, then offers to put it on your shopping list — Yes, add them and No thanks under her question, the same offer described in Ask her to add to your list or Menu. She’s asked to offer what’s left of what the recipe requires; the optional list isn’t part of that offer. Nothing is added until you tap Yes, add them, and the offer has the same item limit as any other. Items go on as names without amounts, and nothing about your Pantry changes.

Saved recipes only. A draft still in the chat can’t be worked out this way; save it first.

Her answer reflects your Pantry and your shopping list at the moment she looked. If someone in your kitchen shops after that, ask again for a fresh count.

Ask her to add to your list or Menu

Ask Mirabel to put something on your shopping list — “add butter and eggs to the list” — or a saved recipe on your Menu — “put the pancakes on the menu” — and she offers rather than acts. Her question arrives with what she’d add listed under it and two buttons: Yes, add them and No thanks.

Nothing is added until you tap Yes, add them. Tap No thanks, or leave the question alone, and nothing changes. That list under her question is the whole of what your tap does, so read it first — item names for the list, recipe titles for the Menu.

One offer covers up to twenty items for the list, or up to five recipes for the Menu. Ask for more and the extras don’t make it into the offer — she’s told it was trimmed, and asked to say so rather than pass it off as the whole list. Check her list against what you asked for either way.

Tap Yes, add them and the items join your Groceries list, or the recipes join your Menu, just as if you’d added them yourself — the chat notes what landed. If part of it couldn’t be added, she names what did and what didn’t rather than claiming the lot.

Items go to your shopping list, not the Pantry. She adds names, never amounts — “flour,” not “2 cups flour” — like a custom item you type into the Groceries page yourself. One difference: an item she adds lands in Miscellaneous unless Mirepoix already knows where you keep it. It gets no suggested aisle, unlike a new item you type yourself. An item that’s already on your list, and not checked off, is left as it is — the chat still counts it as added. One you’ve checked off goes back on the list, unchecked. Nothing about your Pantry changes: putting flour on the list doesn’t tell the Pantry you have flour.

Saved recipes only for the Menu. A recipe has to be one you’ve saved — a draft still in the chat can’t go on the Menu that way, and neither can a QuickBite. If she can’t find a recipe she named, she leaves it out of the offer rather than adding the wrong one.

An offer lasts until the conversation reloads. Closing her panel and opening it again doesn’t retire it — the offer is still live, and Yes, add them still adds. Moving to another page does retire it, and so does coming back to the conversation later. So does leaving the tab and returning while her panel is open. After that, tapping Yes, add them just sends those words to her as a reply, and nothing is added. Ask again and she’ll make a fresh offer. Each recipe title in a Menu offer is a link to that recipe, so opening one to check it counts as moving to another page — decide first, then look.

Ask her to take something off your Menu

Ask Mirabel to clear a recipe off your Menu — “take the lasagna off the menu”, “we’re not making the chili this week” — and she offers rather than acts. A brief Offering to take it off the menu… line appears while she looks, and her question arrives with the recipes listed under it and two buttons: Yes, take them off and No thanks.

She can only offer what’s actually on your Menu. She checks the Menu itself, not your whole collection, so a recipe you’ve saved but haven’t planned this week isn’t offered — she leaves it out rather than pretending to remove something that was never there. One offer covers up to five recipes.

Nothing leaves your Menu until you tap Yes, take them off. Tap No thanks, or leave the question alone, and nothing changes. Tap yes and the recipes come off your Menu just as if you’d unpinned them yourself — the chat notes what came off, and if part of it couldn’t be removed she names what did and what didn’t.

Taking a recipe off the Menu doesn’t delete it. It stays in your recipes exactly as it was; only its place on this week’s Menu goes. Nothing Mirabel can offer deletes anything.

Recipes only. A QuickBite comes off from the Menu page itself — she can’t offer to take one off, the same way she can’t offer to put one on.

An offer lasts until the conversation reloads, exactly like an offer to add. After that, tapping Yes, take them off just sends those words to her as a reply, and nothing changes.

Ask her to make a QuickBite

A QuickBite is a small grocery bundle for something you buy rather than cook. Ask Mirabel for one — “make a quick bite for lemonade mix in Drinks”, “add a quick bite called Toast under Breakfast” — and she offers rather than acts. Her question names what it would be called and which category it would go in, with the grocery items it would carry listed under it, and two buttons: Yes, create it and No thanks.

She can only use a category you already have. If she doesn’t recognize the category you named, she comes back with your categories listed and asks which you meant, rather than picking one or making a new one. She can’t create, rename, or delete a category at all — that’s the Recipes page.

Leave the items out and the title becomes the item. That’s the same rule the QuickBite dialog follows, so “a quick bite for lemonade mix” is a bundle called lemonade mix holding lemonade mix. One offer covers up to twenty items.

Nothing is created until you tap Yes, create it. Tap yes and the QuickBite is filed in that category alongside your recipes, exactly as if you’d made it from the Recipes page — the chat notes what was created.

Creating one doesn’t put it on your Menu. That’s a separate step, from the Menu page’s Add items picker — she can’t offer to do both on one tap, and she’ll say so.

Ask her how to tag a recipe

Ask Mirabel how to tag one of your saved recipes — “how should I tag the chili?”, “what tags fit this one?” — and she offers tags rather than adding them. While she works it out, a brief Looking at how you tag… line appears in the chat. On a recipe’s page you can ask about “this one” without naming it.

The tags come from your kitchen, not from AI. Mirepoix works them out on its own server: it looks at your other recipes that share ingredients with this one, and at the tags those recipes carry. The more ingredients a recipe shares with this one, the more its tags count. So an offer only ever holds tags your kitchen already uses — she can’t invent one — and a tag the recipe already carries is left out.

Her question arrives with the tags listed under it and two buttons: Yes, add them and No thanks. One offer covers up to five tags. Nothing is tagged until you tap Yes, add them. Tap No thanks, or leave the question alone, and nothing changes.

Tap Yes, add them and the tags join the recipe, showing as pills under its title — the chat notes what landed. If part of it couldn’t be added, she names what did and what didn’t rather than claiming the lot.

The tap only adds. It never takes a tag off a recipe, and nothing she offers can. To remove one, open the recipe in the editor or use edit tags on the Recipes page.

It’s recorded like any other change. The recipe’s History gains an updated version marked via Mirabel, noted with the tags that were added.

If your kitchen has nothing to go on, she says so. When nothing you’ve tagged shares ingredients with this recipe, you get a plain answer and no offer to tap — she won’t make tags up to fill the gap.

An offer lasts until the conversation reloads, exactly like an offer to add. After that, tapping Yes, add them just sends those words to her as a reply, and nothing is tagged. Ask again and she’ll make a fresh offer.

Ask her to categorize a recipe

Ask Mirabel how to categorize or file one of your saved recipes — “what category does the chili belong in?”, “how should I file this one?” — and she offers a category rather than setting it. While she works it out, a brief Looking at your other recipes… line appears in the chat. On a recipe’s page you can ask about “this one” without naming it.

The category comes from your kitchen, not from AI. Mirepoix works it out on its own server the same way it works out tag suggestions: it looks at your other recipes that share ingredients with this one, and at the category each of those recipes is filed under. So an offer only ever names a category your kitchen already uses — she can’t invent one — and she never re-offers the category the recipe is already in.

Her question arrives with the category named under it and two buttons: Yes, set it and No thanks. Nothing is filed until you tap Yes, set it. Tap No thanks, or leave the question alone, and nothing changes.

Unlike a tag, this replaces the recipe’s category. A recipe has exactly one category, so tapping Yes, set it moves the recipe out of its current category and into the one she offered — the Recipes page shows it there. If someone changed the recipe in the moment between her offer and your tap, she says she couldn’t set it — check the recipe and ask her again for a fresh suggestion.

It’s recorded like any other change. The recipe’s History gains an updated version marked via Mirabel, noted with the category that was set.

If your kitchen has nothing to go on, she says so. When nothing else in your kitchen shares ingredients with this recipe, you get a plain answer and no offer to tap — she won’t make a category up to fill the gap.

An offer lasts until the conversation reloads, exactly like an offer to tag. After that, tapping Yes, set it just sends those words to her as a reply, and nothing is filed. Ask again and she’ll make a fresh offer.

Your conversation and starting fresh

Your back-and-forth with Mirabel is kept on Mirepoix’s servers for a short time — about three days. That’s long enough for it to survive moving to another page or reloading, and to pick up where you left off on another device. Each kitchen keeps its own separate conversation. Mirabel remembers the current conversation. After about an hour of quiet she starts a fresh one, so old import details don’t carry over. Deleting your account deletes your conversations with her right away, in every kitchen. The Data and privacy page covers what’s kept and for how long.

You’ll see that happen. A line appears across the panel reading New conversation — Mirabel won’t remember the messages above. It shows up when you move to another page, reload, or come back to the tab with her panel open, and again when your next message goes out. Everything above the line stays there to read — she just can’t refer to it any more. The follow-up choices under a draft older than the line drop away, since there’s nothing left for her to condense or rework. The cards keep their buttons, though: Review and save on a Recipe draft and Review in editor on a Proposed edit still open that card’s own version in the editor, for as long as that conversation is kept.

A short note at the start of every fresh conversation reminds you that Mirabel can make mistakes, that your messages go to Anthropic, and that photos you attach go to Mistral AI — tap the ⓘ button in her header to see it again anytime.

To start fresh yourself, tap Clear conversation in the header at the top of her panel. That closes the current conversation and starts a new one — the next thing you ask begins fresh.

To generate her replies, the text you type and the recent part of your conversation go to Anthropic — every message, whatever it holds. An import you start from one of her steps skips that: the paste step, From a website, a single recipe file, tapping Import this recipe on a bare link, and the bookmarklet or the Share sheet all hand what you gave her to Mirepoix’s own server, which reads it there without sending anything to Anthropic, and it goes to Anthropic only when she can’t read it cleanly or you ask her to redo it with AI. That read can still send the ingredient lines it takes to Typesafe AI, an outside AI service, to be checked; Data and privacy says what. A backup archive, or several files at once, doesn’t even have that fallback — Mirepoix’s server restores those itself and nothing about them goes to Anthropic. An import you ask for in an ordinary message doesn’t skip it — the recipe text or link is already in the message, and the draft is built with AI. Asking her to import recipe text from the recent chat, or to revise or condense a draft, always sends that text and the draft. So the draft can be filed correctly, your kitchen’s category and tag names go along with an import too. Either way, Mirepoix’s server is what opens a link you send. A photo never goes to Anthropic: it goes to Mistral AI, which reads its text when she builds the draft, and the lines it read go to Typesafe AI to be sorted. Once a photo draft is in the conversation, it goes along with your later messages like any other draft. When you ask about your own recipes, the matching titles, page addresses, categories, and tags go along too. When you ask about your Pantry, your Menu, or your shopping list, what she finds there goes along the same way. An offer to add sends nothing new — the item names are her own words from your conversation, and the recipe titles are ones a search already sends. The tags in an offer to tag, and the category in an offer to categorize, are your kitchen’s own, worked out on Mirepoix’s server and then sent to her so she can say what she’s offering. Either way, after you tap, a short note of what landed rides along with your next message. If your kitchen has saved cooking preferences, a short summary of them goes with every message. Data and privacy covers what kinds of content go to Anthropic and what Anthropic may do with them.

When she’s helping a lot of cooks

Sometimes a lot of requests reach Mirabel at once — from you, or from other cooks across Mirepoix. When that happens, she works through them in turn, so her reply can take a little longer to arrive. Nothing is broken and nothing is lost — you don’t need to do anything. She’s working in the background, so you can even close the tab or switch devices and pick her reply back up later. This isn’t your monthly AI allowance running out — that message names the date she’s back.

The monthly AI allowance

Mirabel shares one monthly AI allowance with AI import and photo import — the same pool covers all three, for everyone in the kitchen. When it runs out, Mirabel says she needs a breather, tells you the date she’s back, and gives the support address, support@mirepoix.recipes, in case you need her sooner. The allowance resets on the 1st of each month.

See also

Last updated October 15, 2026