Dee's kitchen made
Bulgogi
“Doubled the pear. Don't tell anyone.”
Want · 3Cook it too
Now in TestFlight · iPhone
Cook anything.
A week of meals in just a few words. Manners plans the nights you actually cook, prices the basket before you buy it, hands you the list — and stays with you at the stove.
You say
two dinners, two lunches, nothing with chicken
200recipes, each with real quantities, real steps and an honest keeping time
12cuisines — from American and Mexican to Korean, Levantine and Vietnamese
9allergens gated, never “warned” — a dish that carries one simply never appears
0trackers. No analytics SDK, no ad identifiers, no location. Your week stays on your phone
≈every price is a range, because a single figure that lands wrong at the register is a lie
How it works
Say it once. Then stop thinking about it.
No grid of nine hundred recipes to scroll. You describe the week the way you'd say it out loud, and Manners does the part nobody enjoys — on the phone, with no model call and no network.
The plan
Tonight, then the rest.
One screen that knows the difference between what you're cooking in an hour and what you're cooking on Sunday.
- Tonight, raised. Day, meal, dish, minutes, servings — and two buttons: see the recipe, or start cooking.
- Still to cook. A night that slipped past isn't deleted. You already bought those ingredients, so it's pinned above everything newer.
- Swipe a meal to swap it for the next best fit — the list rebuilds and your checkmarks survive — or to remove it.
- Every shopping trip is its own run. Planned Monday, cooked two of four, planned again Thursday? Monday's list keeps its own progress.
- Two taps after dinner. Taste: less, good, more. How it sat: fine, a bit heavy, didn't agree. That's the whole review.
The list
Grouped the way you walk.
Produce, bakery, meat and seafood, dairy, the dry aisles, oils, spices — frozen last, on purpose. One lap, not three.
- Shelf words. Whole packs are named the way the shelf names them — 1 bunch, 2 × 3 lb bag. Loose things get the number the scale will say.
- Swap in the aisle. A swap icon appears only where a real stand-in exists. Each option carries a similarity ring — it never says 100, because a swap is never the same ingredient — and a note like “Drops the dairy.” or “Introduces gluten — check the household first.”
- Price in words, only when it matters. “About the same price.” “About 30% cheaper.” Within 15% is noise, so it says nothing.
- Two questions, two modes. Before you buy: what goes in the order? In the aisle: do I have this yet? Tap for the basket, swipe left for “had it already.”
- The quantity carries across. Your recipe stays as written.
Cook mode
Big type. Your hands are busy.
A recipe on a phone is usually a wall of text and a screen that goes dark at step four. This is the opposite.
- One step per screen, in type you can read with raw chicken on both hands.
- Quantities, already scaled to the servings you chose, set in bold inside the sentence — 420 ml, 1½ cups, 2–3 cloves.
- Timers read out of the step. “Lowest heat 15 minutes” becomes a button. A range takes the low end, so it rings before the food is done, never after it's ruined.
- The screen stays awake for the whole session — even if you switch apps to answer a text.
- The next step waits in the footer. One tap, and it's on screen.
Kept
The ones you keep.
The star on the corner of every dish. It does three jobs, and none of them is “make a folder.”
- It tells the planner what you love. A kept dish carries weight in ranking — and it's the one thing that survives repeat fatigue, so it can come back next month instead of being buried for having been cooked recently.
- It's somewhere to go when you don't want to be surprised. “Cook something I know” is a real mood, and the shortlist is the wrong answer to it.
- It's the fastest way to a week. Check the ones you want; they're already chosen when the shortlist opens.
What it asks, and what it never will
Five questions. Ninety seconds.
Each card has a sensible default already selected, so “next” is also “skip.” It learns the rest as you go — from what you cook, what you swap, and two taps after dinner.
The first ninety seconds
- Who is at the table?1 to 6+, and whether anyone eats less
- Anything you don't eat?A hard filter. Dairy, gluten, pork, shellfish, nuts, beef, heat, alcohol
- Anything that doesn't sit well?A weight, never a veto. Onion and garlic, beans, fried food, heavy tomato…
- What do you cook with?Dutch oven, air fryer, slow cooker, rice cooker… so a braise never lands in a kitchen without a pot for it
- Roughly what do you spend?One number, pre-set for your household
Never asked: calories, macros, weight, goals. Manners is not a diet app, and the absence of those questions is the point.
Two taps after dinner
Mark a meal cooked and it asks two things — not a star rating, not a review.
Taste
Less of thisGoodMore of this
How it sat
FineA bit heavyDidn't agree
“Noted — that goes into what gets suggested next.” The second question is the one no other planner asks. Manners is careful with it: it takes several reports, over weeks, before anything is quietly avoided, and old evidence fades — because a bad Tuesday is not a diagnosis.
The details
The boring parts, done right.
Most of this app is the part you never see: a planner that is a pure function of what you told it, and a catalog that has been checked against itself.
A band, not a guess dressed as a fact.
$4.10$4.90
Every ingredient carries a confidence, and confidence sets the width: ±8% when the price is well known, ±18% when it's typical, ±35% when it's a guess. One shaky ingredient makes the whole dish shaky — the worst row wins, never the average. Across a week the errors combine the way independent errors do, so twenty lines don't add up to a band nobody would believe.
Allergens, both ways.
Every allergen a dish declares is checked against its ingredients, and every ingredient against the declaration — optional ones included, because “optional” is not an escape hatch. An allergen is never a warning on a shown dish. The dish simply never appears.
98%
Fit for you.
Taste on six axes, how things have sat with you, price against your budget, effort against the night, ingredients shared with the rest of the week, variety, and what's in season — all in one number.
Filters that know what they are.
Time · under 45 minPrice · under $8Avoid · dairy, shellfishBalance · high protein
A ceiling, a removal and a balance are three different kinds of thing. Time and price are hard ceilings. Avoid removes — it never “ranks down” an allergen. Balance only reorders, because emptying the deck over a preference would be the wrong kind of obedience. And anything you've already kept is never hidden by a filter you set afterward.
Overlap pays.
Thursday's tacos already need the bunch of cilantro, so Sunday's rice bowl adds nothing to the basket. The planner knows the difference between what a recipe uses, what the shelf charges, and what a dish actually adds — and it plans around the third one.
Color, not stock photos.
Each dish wears a tone keyed to what it is — tomato and chile run red, herbs green, grain and egg amber. Photographs of dinners you'll never make are the thing this app is not.
Repeat fatigue.
What you cooked recently steps back — quietly, never excluded, so a thin week still fills. Unless you kept it. Then it's welcome back whenever it likes.
Days start tomorrow.
A plan implies a grocery run, and a grocery run that hasn't happened yet can't feed anyone this evening. Weeknights get a 30-minute budget, weekends 55, lunches 20.
Estimated, and labeled so.
Protein, carbs and fat per serving, estimated from the ingredients. Shown so you can balance a week — never turned into a goal, a score or a streak.
Coming with launch
The Table
A table for the people you actually eat with.
Every other food app shows you photographs of dinners you will never make. What gets passed around here is the dish itself — so when a friend cooks something good, it lands in your week already priced for your household, scaled to your portions, and on a night you actually cook. A photo cannot be cooked.
- Sign in with an emailed code. No password to forget, nothing reused from another site.
- A table has an invite code you can read across a kitchen — no I, O, 0 or 1, because someone will be typing it without looking.
- Being invited adds you to nothing. Accepting is the only thing that does.
- The feed is grouped by night, never “2 hours ago.” A cook happened on a night.
- No discover feed, no strangers, no follower count. There is no way to find a table you weren't invited to.
Tonight
Eve passed you
Chana masala
“You said you wanted something for the freezer.”
Cook it tooNot this time
Yesterday
Sam made
Pad Krapow Gai
Want · 1Cook it too
Thursday crew · read it out loud WKPM 7H3Q
Explore
Reading, not planning.
A short editorial shelf that changes with the season. Nothing on it touches your week unless you keep something — and if a collection is paid for, it says so before you read it. Sponsored cards exist here and nowhere else in the app: not in your plan, not in your list, not at the stove.
In season now
Cooking into fall
Apples and cider are at their cheapest, and the oven stops being a burden.
Spotlight
Lemons, while they are good
Every dish in the catalog that leans on one.
Spotlight
One dish, four hours, three dinners
A bolognese that pays for Sunday afternoon all week.
Collection
One pan, one wash
Sheet pans and skillets. Dinner, then one thing in the sink.
Held to
Things Manners refuses to do.
- Ask about calories, macros or weight. Not at onboarding, not ever.
- Make you confirm each meal. Silence means yes. The moment a checkbox appears, a plan becomes a to-do list.
- Show three swaps side by side. One counter-proposal. A grid hands the decision back — the exact fatigue this exists to remove.
- Warn you about an allergen. A dish that carries one is not shown with a caution. It is not shown.
- Put ads in your plan, your list or your cooking. Sponsored cards live on Explore, labeled, and go nowhere else.
- Track you. No analytics SDK, no ad identifiers, no location. Planning happens on the phone and stays there.
- Print a single price. A figure that lands 18% under at the register does permanent damage. A range is more credible because it is honest about what isn't known yet.
- Bounce you into a store's app “for now.” Ordering arrives inside Manners, or it doesn't arrive.
What's next
Built, and on its way.
Some of this is finished and waiting for a build; some is a stated promise. Either way, the waitlist hears first.
Next update
Breakfasts
The third row of the week grid is drawn and waiting. Breakfast is a habit more than a decision, so it gets handled like one.
Next App Store update
Say it, don't type it
The mic in the composer. The same parser, spoken.
Cook mode
“Next,” out loud
Hands-free advance at the stove — the single most felt moment in the product, and the reason cook mode gets used past step three.
Later release
Order it, in the app
Kroger and Instacart, without leaving Manners. Real store prices tighten the band to ±3%, and a store substitution can never sneak past your allergen filter.
Built, awaiting a switch
Cook once, eat three nights
Batch mode: one cook session that interleaves dishes, filling one dish's oven time with another's chopping. Scaled to each dish's own keeping window, so a plan never quietly turns into waste.
The Table
Pass a dish across
Finishing a cook posts it to your table; one tap hands a dish to a friend, already priced for their kitchen.
Accounts
Sign in with Apple
Alongside the emailed code, for people who'd rather not type one.
The only one
One notification
“Sunday's plan is ready when you are.” That's the entire notification strategy.
After iPhone
Android
The whole planner is shared code already. The phone shell is what's left.
Questions
The short answers.
When can I use it?
Manners is on iPhone now through TestFlight for early testers, and the waitlist is the order invitations go out in. Join it and you'll get one email when there's a build for you.
Do I need an account?
No. Planning, shopping and cooking need no account, no email and no password — your household, your allergies and your week stay on your phone. Only the Table, for cooking with friends, asks you to sign in, and it does that with an emailed code.
Does it work without a connection?
Yes. The planner, the list and cook mode are all on-device. Going online fetches new recipes when there are some, and powers the Table.
How does it handle allergies?
Nine allergens — dairy, gluten, egg, soy, shellfish, fish, tree nut, peanut and sesame — are gates, not warnings: a dish that carries one never appears, and a swap that would introduce one is dropped rather than ranked down. Every recipe's declaration is checked against its ingredients both ways, optional ones included. That said, Manners can't know how an ingredient was manufactured or what a store substituted, so if a reaction would be serious, always check the label.
Are the prices real?
Today they're estimates — from regional averages and real pack sizes — and they're always shown as a range so you know how sure we are. When ordering arrives, real store prices tighten the band to about ±3%.
Is it free?
While it's in TestFlight, yes. If that changes, the waitlist hears before anyone else.
Android?
iPhone first. The whole planning engine is already shared code, so Android is a shell away — it's on the list above.
What do you collect?
On this page: the email you give us. In the app: nothing, unless you sign in to the Table — then your email, a name, a handle, and what you post to your tables. No analytics, no ad trackers, no location, no selling of anything. The privacy policy says the same thing at greater length.
Be there on day one