Overview
Pantry is a personal project — a recipe webapp and mobile app that I'm designing and building solo with the help of AI tools. The idea came from a simple frustration: I'd open my fridge, see random ingredients, and have no idea what to cook.
The Problem
Most recipe apps start with the recipe and expect you to go shopping. But real life works the other way around — you already have ingredients, and you need ideas for what to make with them.
My Role
This is a solo project where I own everything: research, design, development, and iteration. I'm using AI tools (Claude, v0, Cursor) to accelerate development while maintaining full creative and design control.
Process
I started with research and validation — interviewing 10+ friends and colleagues about their cooking habits. I identified the core pain point: ingredient-first discovery vs recipe-first browsing. I mapped out the competitor landscape (SuperCook, Whisk, Mealime) and prioritized a clean, ingredient-input-first flow. I designed a pantry management system that remembers what you have, and created a matching algorithm UI that shows recipe compatibility percentage.
Building with AI
I used Claude for architecture decisions and code generation, Figma for all UI design, then translated to code. The project is actively in development and I'm documenting the journey as I go.
Key Takeaway
Building a product solo — from research to shipped code — has given me a much deeper empathy for the engineering constraints designers often overlook.