AIMakeFood - The AI Sous Chef With Real Eyes

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Scanning Fridge
Modify Ingredients
Recipes
Cook from inventory
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Meal History
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Inspiration

We wanted to explore what's possible when you combine Gemini's multimodal AI with everyday cooking challenges. Food waste is a real problem—people often forget what's in their pantry, can't think of recipes to use expiring ingredients, and end up throwing away perfectly good food. We built AIMakeFood to see if AI vision and smart pantry management could make a meaningful difference in reducing waste while making meal planning actually enjoyable.

What it does

AIMakeFood is a smart kitchen assistant that helps you cook with what you already have:

Smart Pantry Management

AI-Powered Ingredient Scanning: Take a photo or video of your fridge, pantry or counter, and Gemini Vision automatically identifies ingredients—no manual typing required
Automatic Expiration Tracking: The app tracks freshness and warns you when ingredients are about to expire
Recipe Suggestions: Get personalized recipe recommendations based on what's actually in your kitchen, prioritizing items that need to be used soon

Guided Cooking Experience

Step-by-Step Cooking Mode: Follow recipes with clear instructions, built-in timers, and progress tracking
Flexible Recipe Library: Browse curated recipes or create your own, with support for external recipe imports from TheMealDB
Dietary Awareness: Recipes respect your skill level and dietary restrictions

Premium Features

Subscription Tiers: Free tier with core features, paid tiers for unlimited scanning and advanced features
Dual Payment Support: Accept both traditional payments (Stripe) and cryptocurrency (Coinbase Commerce) for global accessibility

How we built it

Frontend Stack

Next.js 14 with App Router for a modern, fast user experience
Deployed as a static site via GitHub Pages for reliable, low-cost hosting
Progressive Web App (PWA) features for mobile-first cooking experience

AI & Backend

Gemini 3 Flash Preview for ingredient recognition and recipe intelligence
Supabase PostgreSQL database with Row Level Security for data protection
Deno Edge Functions for serverless AI processing
Custom privacy proxy email system to protect user identity

Payment Infrastructure

Stripe integration for standard subscriptions
Coinbase Commerce for cryptocurrency payments
Usage tracking and tier-based feature limits

Security & Privacy

Row-level security policies on all database tables
API key vault for secure credential storage
Multi-factor authentication support
Privacy-focused architecture with proxy emails

Challenges we ran into

Lack Of Funds: We were only able to do minor amount of testing while building the app due to higher than anticipated API costs and not enough funds to do much more testing various scenarios and adding more functionality Vision API Costs: Processing high-resolution images for every scan gets expensive fast. We implemented intelligent image compression and resolution scaling to reduce API costs by ~70% while maintaining accuracy. Supabase Max Functions Limit: We had to group all of our functions by feature to bypass the max limits for number of functions we could have

Static Site AI Integration: Hosting a static Next.js app on GitHub Pages while running compute-intensive AI functions required careful architecture. We used Supabase Edge Functions as a serverless AI layer, keeping the frontend lightweight and cacheable.

Subscription State Management: Coordinating subscription status across both Stripe and crypto payments, with proper webhook handling and grace periods, required building a robust state machine that handles edge cases like payment failures and subscription upgrades.

Multimodal Prompt Engineering: Getting Gemini to accurately identify ingredients across different lighting conditions, package types, and kitchen setups required extensive prompt tuning and test image validation.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It Actually Works: We built a genuinely useful tool that people can use today. The ingredient scanner accurately identifies items, the expiration tracker saves food from being wasted, and the recipe suggestions are relevant and practical.

Production-Ready Architecture: This isn't just a hackathon demo—we deployed it with real payment processing, proper security (RLS, MFA, audit logs), and a scalable edge function architecture.

Dual Payment Innovation: Supporting both traditional and cryptocurrency payments makes the app accessible globally, including regions where credit cards are less common.

Seamless AI Integration: Gemini Vision is integrated so smoothly that scanning feels magical—point your camera and ingredients appear in your inventory automatically.

What we learned

Multimodal AI is Ready: Gemini's vision capabilities are genuinely production-ready for practical applications like ingredient recognition. The accuracy surprised us.

Static Sites Can Do AI: You don't need a complex backend server to build AI-powered apps. Edge functions + static frontend is a powerful, cost-effective architecture.

Food Waste Matters: Testing with real users showed how much food people genuinely waste because they forget what they have. Even simple expiration tracking made a measurable difference.

Prompt Engineering is Critical: The difference between "list ingredients" and a carefully crafted prompt with examples and formatting instructions is night and day for accuracy.

What's next for AIMakeFood

Near-term Enhancements

Safety HUD: Real-time cooking monitoring with hazard detection (fire, hot surfaces, cross-contamination)
Live Cooking Analysis: Frame-by-frame technique feedback during cooking
Hands-Free Voice Control: "Hey Chef" wake word and full voice navigation for when your hands are messy
Kitchen Forensics: Post-cooking dish analysis to explain what went wrong and how to improve

Long-term Vision

Smart Home Integration: Connect to Matter-compatible appliances for automatic temperature control and safety shutoff
Wearable Data: Adjust recipe nutrition based on your fitness tracker data (post-workout protein boost, etc.)
AR Cooking Glasses: Visual overlay guidance on AR glasses for an immersive cooking experience
Community Marketplace: Share and discover AI-remixed recipes from other users