Recipz

Turn those Instagram food reels into recipes you'll actually cook. Import any instagram recipe, organize into cookbooks, and generate grocery lists - all in one simple app.

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Inspiration

When I received the RevenueCat hackathon email, Eitan's brief immediately resonated with me because I too had 100+ recipes saved on my insta but had never cooked a single one. Beyond solving this problem, I saw an opportunity to challenge myself as a non-technical founder. I've been meaning to design and build an app on my own since a long time, and this hackathon gave me the push to finally do it.

What it does

Recipz solves a simple problem: people save Instagram food Reels but never actually cook them. The app allows users to share Instagram content directly, automatically extracts recipes with ingredients and instructions, organizes them into meal-type cookbooks (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Desserts), and generates consolidated grocery lists from multiple recipes. It's designed to transform saved content into actionable meals.

How I built it

As someone who had never coded or designed anything before, I took a systematic approach:

  1. Planning: Started with a simple PRD focused on 1-2 core features with excellent UX
  2. Design: Used Claude Chat to ideate UI structures and screen flows, then Google Stitch to create the actual designs
  3. Development: Built the entire app using Claude Code in Cursor IDE terminal - every line of code, bug fix, and deployment
  4. Tech stack: Expo SDK/React Native for iOS frontend, Hono web framework on Node.js backend hosted on Render, Apify for Instagram scraping, OpenAI APIs for recipe extraction, grocery list generation and structured data parsing, RevenueCat for subscription management

This was my first time doing the design and coding independently. Every design decision, every line of code, every bug fix was a learning experience.

Challenges I ran into

Design inconsistency: Google Stitch created good UI designs but struggled with consistent design guidelines and couldn't handle UX flow creation effectively.

Debugging iterations: The biggest challenge was bug fixing through AI-assisted coding. Many bugs required multiple builds and multiple back-and-forth exchanges. I had to learn when to intervene - rephrasing prompts, suggesting different approaches, or using my growing understanding of the code structure to ask better questions. This taught me that AI is a powerful tool, but strategic human guidance is essential.

Recipe extraction limitations: Currently, the app fetches recipe instructions and ingredients from Instagram post captions. However, many creators share recipe details through overlay text on videos, voiceovers, or in the comments section instead. When caption data is unavailable, the extracted recipe comes back empty - though users can still access the original Reel from within the app.

I plan to solve this by expanding the extraction pipeline to pull recipe data from multiple sources: video text overlays (using OCR), audio transcription from voiceovers, and comment parsing. This will significantly improve extraction success rates and provide a more complete recipe experience.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Building a complete, functional iOS app from scratch without any prior coding or design experience. Going from a simple idea to a live app with proper onboarding, core features, monetization, and App Store deployment in 3-4 weeks is something I'm genuinely proud of. It's given me the confidence to keep building stuff like this.

What I learned

  1. MVP discipline: How to ruthlessly narrow requirements to 1-2 core features that solve the problem exceptionally well
  2. Design independence: Proficiency with tools like Stitch and Figma make - no longer dependent on designers for iterations
  3. AI-assisted development: How to effectively use Claude Code and Cursor to build production-ready apps as a non-technical founder
  4. Rapid execution: The entire process from idea to working app in 2-3 weeks

Most importantly, I learned that being non-technical isn't a barrier anymore - it's about asking the right questions and being persistent through the learning curve.

What's next for Recipz

Whether I win or not, I'm all in on Recipz. Winning would be amazing - the chance to work with Eitan and scale this to thousands of users. But even without that, I'm still building. I've lived this problem myself, and I know exactly where I want to take this next.

Next features:

  • Multi-platform imports (TikTok, screenshots, recipe websites)
  • Meal calendar for weekly planning
  • AI-powered recipe suggestions
  • Community recipe discovery

I've already developed strategies for organic user acquisition and monetization. This is just the beginning.

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