How it decides

The rules

Everything the planner does. Read-only — change behaviour by tagging meals in your sheet.

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Only your own meal list — never a new recipe.
Only meals in the active season.
Only meals fitting that night's type.
Backups & freezer meals are never auto-planned — pick them by hand when plans change.
Never the same meal twice in a week.

Hard limits per week, across three independent layers. Anything at max is simply unavailable for the rest of the week.

Category caps as above — one pesto, one sausage meal, one breaded-and-chips, one Thai curry, one Indian curry.
Same dish type needs 3 days' gap — so a Thai and an Indian curry can both happen in a week, but never within a couple of days.
Minimum weeks between: each meal's own setting (2, 3, 4, 5, 6 weeks) is respected against history.
The same exact meal is avoided for ~2 weeks and capped within a month — so no repeat roast two Sundays running.

Same protein group back-to-back: strongly avoided (sausage, bacon and chorizo count separately from each other).
Same carb type two nights running: strongly avoided (mash, chips and new potatoes count separately).
Same dish type close together: avoided — more so if the cuisine matches too.
Two hearty meals back-to-back: gently avoided.
Raw chicken breast: at most one chopping-raw-chicken meal Monday–Thursday.

Cuisine alone isn't penalised — pizza, risotto, pesto and bolognese are all Italian but different dishes, so they sit near each other happily.

Go-to — strongly favoured, so your regulars fill the week first.
Regular — normal weighting.
Occasional — pushed down; only surfaces once go-tos are used up or blocked.
Special occasion — never auto-suggested, but always available to pick by hand.

As history builds and go-tos get blocked by their spacing rules, the planner naturally works down into the occasional ones.

After a big-batch meal (bolognese, chilli, roast chicken, gammon, pulled pork), the planner actively suggests its leftover version in the following days and doesn't count it as a clash.
Without a recent batch, leftover meals are down-weighted so they aren't cooked from scratch.

Quick favours fast meals · Weekend allows projects · Keep warm only reheatable/cold-ok meals · Just a few favours light & quick · Off = no meal.
Preferred day(s) is a hard rule: “Weekend” only lands Sat/Sun, “Sunday” only Sunday, “Friday” only Friday, “Any weeknight” only Mon–Fri.
High-effort meals (7-10) are pushed away from Mon–Fri, and blocked entirely on a Quick night.
Flag an ingredient + deadline and a meal using it is pulled in by that night.

Meals marked worth prepping ahead are listed on the Shopping & prep tab so you know which nights are worth chopping for.

All soft preferences with fall-backs, so a week can always be filled — and you can always overrule it.

What's for dinner