Minthee
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Topic 02•Engine•4 min read

How Recommendations Work

Understand the local scoring engine: Recipe Collections, Rediscover, repeat frequency, and rating influence.

The core purpose of Minthee is answering the daily question: “What should we eat next?”

Unlike algorithmic social feeds that try to sell sponsored content, Minthee’s recommendation engine runs 100% locally on your device using your own ratings, repeat frequency settings, and cooking history.

1. Recipe Collections & Rediscover (Home Screen)

On the Home screen, Minthee organizes your entire recipe library into categorized, scannable collections:

  • All Recipes: Your complete recipe library with instant multi-entity search and tag filtering.
  • Rediscover: Automatically surfaces high-rated family favorites (8–10 stars) that have finished resting and haven’t been cooked in weeks.
  • Category Collections: Dedicated cards for Dinner, Lunch, Breakfast, Dessert, and custom categories showing dish counts and cover photography.

From any recipe card or detail screen, you have quick action controls:

  • Mark as Cooked: Logs that you cooked the dish, prompts for a quick 1–10 star rating update if desired, restarts its repeat frequency timer, and records the cook date.
  • Add to Meal Plan: Schedules the dish directly onto your weekly meal calendar.
  • Start Cooking: Launches the hands-free Cooking Mode with step-by-step instructions and stove timers.

2. Repeat Frequency

Ever cooked a delicious lasagna, loved it, but definitely didn’t want lasagna again two nights later? That’s what the Repeat Frequency prevents.

  • Each dish has a configurable Repeat Frequency (Days) value (default is 15 days, customizable from 1 to 60 days).
  • You can customize repeat frequency on any dish:
    • Complex feasts might have a 14–21 day frequency.
    • Quick staple lunches might have a 2–3 day frequency.
  • When you cook a dish, it enters the resting phase. While resting within its repeat frequency window, its recommendation score is held at zero, preventing it from showing up in Rediscover or Plan Week.
  • Once the repeat frequency interval elapses, the dish becomes Ready to Cook again.

3. How Dishes Are Scored

Minthee uses a transparent local scoring formula (ScoringEngine.kt):

  1. Repeat Frequency Gate: If the days since last cooked is less than the dish’s repeat frequency, the score is strictly 0.0.
  2. Elapsed Days Multiplier: Once ready to cook, the dish’s score equals daysSinceCooked × ratingWeight. A favorite meal cooked 40 days ago floats to the top of your suggestions.
  3. Rating Weight: Dishes rated 8–10 stars have higher weights (up to 10.0), while unrated dishes default to a balanced 7.0.
  4. Ready to Cook Status: Dishes that have cleared their repeat frequency window are marked as Ready to Cook so household staples are rotated smoothly.

4. Fine-Tuning Your Preferences

In Settings > Tuning, you can adjust scoring parameters:

  • Fine-tune how unrated dishes compete with established favorites.
  • Adjust default repeat frequency days for newly created dishes.
  • Configure week-start and recommendation preferences.