Intelligent Meal Planning and Recipe Management System
SmartMeal (Mealie) is a self-hosted, full-featured meal planning and recipe management platform that streamlines cooking, grocery planning, and nutritional tracking.
It helps users create, store, and categorize recipes, manage pantry ingredients, and automatically generate shopping lists based on selected meals.
Designed for health-conscious users, SmartMeal emphasizes automation, simplicity, and sustainability — reducing food waste while promoting better dietary habits. The system provides an intuitive web interface with user authentication, weekly planners, and data-driven recommendations.
The SmartMeal (Mealie) project is a robust and modular web-based system designed to digitalize household meal planning. The platform integrates a dynamic recipe database, an intelligent shopping list generator, and a pantry management system. Its backend, powered by FastAPI and PostgreSQL, ensures scalable performance and structured data handling, while the frontend, developed using Vue.js and Vite, offers a responsive and user-friendly experience.
By combining containerized deployment through Docker, SmartMeal achieves easy portability and reproducibility across environments. The system aims to minimize daily decision fatigue, encourage balanced nutrition, and optimize grocery usage. Future iterations include potential integration of AI-based meal suggestions and personalized nutrition analytics.
- 🧾 Recipe Management – Add, edit, and categorize recipes with ingredients and instructions
- 🥗 Meal Planning – Create weekly or daily meal plans
- 🛒 Smart Shopping List – Automatically generate grocery lists based on planned meals
- 🏠 Pantry Integration – Track available ingredients and update inventory automatically
- 👥 User Authentication – Manage users with role-based permissions
- 📱 Responsive Interface – Works across devices with modern UI/UX
- 🌍 Localization – Supports multiple measurement units and languages
- FastAPI – High-performance Python web framework
- PostgreSQL – Relational database system
- SQLAlchemy – ORM for database models
- Alembic – Database migrations
- Poetry – Dependency and environment management
- Uvicorn – ASGI server
- Vue.js (or React alternative) – Progressive JavaScript framework
- Vite – Next-gen frontend build tool
- Bootstrap/TailwindCSS – Styling and layout
| Software | Version | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Python | 3.12.x | Backend runtime |
| Docker Desktop | Latest | Container management |
| Git | Latest | Version control |
| Node.js & npm | LTS | Frontend build |
| PostgreSQL | 15+ | Database backend |
"```bash" git clone https://github.com//SmartMeal.git
cd SmartMeal
docker compose up -d
Then open: http://localhost:9000
Default login credentials: Email: admin@mealie.local Password: MyPassword
🧩 Option 2: Manual Setup (Python + Node.js)
pip install poetry
poetry install
poetry shell
poetry run uvicorn mealie.app:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 9000 --reload
cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev
🍴 Usage Instructions
Recipes: Add, browse, or import recipes manually or from URLs Meal Planner: Create weekly or daily plans using available recipes Pantry: Add purchased ingredients and auto-deduct when used Shopping List: Auto-generated based on planner selections User Profiles: Customize preferences, language, and units
📊 Architecture Overview SmartMeal/ │ ├── backend/ │ ├── app/ │ ├── database/ │ ├── routes/ │ └── models/ │ ├── frontend/ │ ├── src/ │ ├── components/ │ ├── pages/ │ └── assets/ │ ├── docker-compose.yml ├── pyproject.toml └── README.md
📷 Screenshots (Recommended for Report)
Login Page / Signup Page Dashboard / Meal Planner Recipe Details Page Shopping List Pantry View
🧭 Future Enhancements
AI-based recipe recommendations Nutrition and calorie tracking integration Voice-based meal assistant PWA support for mobile access Grocery price APIs for real-time cost estimation
🔐 Default Login Credentials
| Role | Password | |
|---|---|---|
| Admin | admin@mealie.local |
MyPassword |
| User | Create via Signup | N/A |
🧩 Keywords
FastAPI, Meal Planning, Recipe Management, Smart Cooking, Grocery Automation, PostgreSQL, Docker, Vue.js, Nutrition Tracking, Pantry System, Python Web App