Cravely - Crave it, Cook it!

Cravely transforms recipe chaos into clean, organized cooking instructions. Save recipes from the web (and supported videos) and cook with a distraction-free view that keeps you focused on the food.

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Inspiration

When we read the hackathon briefs, Eitan’s immediately spoke to us — we love cooking, and we’ve felt the same pain over and over: amazing recipes are scattered across websites and videos, buried under ads, popups, long intros, and endless scrolling.

The simplest version of the inspiration is this: we genuinely needed something like Cravely ourselves. We wanted a fast way to take any recipe link (or supported video) and turn it into clean, structured ingredients and steps — then save it in a personal cookbook we’d actually use in the kitchen.

What it does

Cravely — Crave it, Cook it! transforms recipe chaos into clean cooking instructions.

With Cravely, we can:

  • Paste a link to a recipe page and instantly extract ingredients + step-by-step instructions
  • Save recipes into a personal cookbook
  • Organize everything with collections
  • Cook using a distraction-free Cook Mode designed for real kitchens
  • Use Guest mode (no sign-in required) and optionally sign in via OAuth for a smoother cross-device experience

How we built it

Our workflow evolved as the project grew:

  • Prototyping in Replit: We started in Replit to move fast and validate the idea quickly.
  • Going local with Cursor: After enough back-and-forth, we pulled everything down locally and continued development in Cursor for a tighter iteration loop and better control.
  • React Native + Expo (first time for us): We built the app with React Native using Expo, which was new territory and a big part of the learning curve.
  • Backend-driven extraction: The “magic” of Cravely is converting messy pages into clean recipes, so we built backend logic to handle URL extraction and normalization reliably.

Challenges we ran into

A few things were more “real-world hard” than they look on paper:

  • Expo realities: Expo helped us ship quickly, but we ran into the usual friction around configuration, build quirks, and polishing the app toward distribution-ready quality.
  • OAuth + guest flows: Authentication is always deceptively time-consuming. Making sure OAuth sign-in works smoothly across environments — while also offering a clean Guest mode — took careful handling.
  • Reliable URL extraction: Recipe pages vary wildly in structure and quality. Handling edge cases (dynamic sites, inconsistent formatting, odd ingredient layouts) without making the system brittle was one of the biggest technical challenges.
  • Taking it from “works” to “submittable”: The biggest surprise challenge wasn’t coding — it was getting everything ready for submission: subscription setup, metadata, privacy details, reviewer notes, and all the small things that can block a release.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • We shipped a working end-to-end product: link → extraction → saved recipe → Cook Mode.
  • We built a real subscription setup (the kind that’s actually ready for review, not just a demo).
  • We nailed a Guest mode path so anyone (including reviewers) can try the core loop instantly.
  • We implemented and validated the backend extraction logic, which is the hardest part to get right.
  • We created icons and branding we genuinely like — and surprisingly, that part was a lot of fun.

What we learned

  • Shipping is a separate skill from building. We’ve built apps before, but taking an app from code to a full App Store submission is its own discipline: privacy labeling, subscription metadata, review readiness, screenshots, and all the details that don’t show up until the end.
  • React Native + Expo has a different “shape” than what we were used to — and we learned a lot about the ecosystem, workflow, and debugging patterns.
  • Good extraction is product-defining. Getting parsing “mostly working” is easy; making it reliable enough that users trust it takes real iteration.

What's next for Cravely - Crave it, Cook it!

  • Improve extraction quality and coverage (more edge cases, better formatting, smarter handling of weird pages).
  • Tighten the cooking workflow (timers, scaling servings, ingredient checklists, step highlighting).
  • Better organization (tags, search improvements, collections UX polish).
  • More sharing options (export, share a recipe cleanly with attribution, and collaboration features over time).
  • Continue polishing for launch: performance, onboarding, subscription UX clarity, and reviewer-proof flows.

Cravely started as something we wanted for ourselves — now we’re excited to keep building it into the easiest way to go from “craving” to “cooking.”

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