Nosh - AI Powered Kitchen Companion

Nosh tracks inventory, gives expiry alerts, scans & analyzes meals, creates recipes from what you have or from a photo, tailors meal plans for your dietary needs, and track personalized nutrition.

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Inspiration

When the global pandemic hit, food became the center of my daily life. I started cooking at home more and realized just how much food I was wasting, buying the same ingredients every week, then forgetting about them until they were expired or rotten. It was frustrating and felt like tossing hard-earned money straight into the bin, especially now, with grocery bills constantly climbing. Every bit of wasted food isn’t just lost resources, it’s even more expensive than ever before. Most of this happened because I didn’t know what to cook with what I had, or simply lost track of expiry dates.

I wanted a simple solution that wouldn’t require tedious manual entry, something as easy as snapping a photo and letting AI handle the rest. Existing apps only offered pieces of the puzzle, like basic meal logging or calorie tracking, but nothing that truly combined inventory management, meal planning, and AI-powered recipe generation, personalized calorie tracking into one.

I saw a real gap in the market for an all-in-one kitchen companion that could help reduce food waste, personalize nutrition, and make home cooking easier and more inspiring. The thought of building such an app was put on halt since I have little to no coding experience and had no idea how to work with AI APIs. Until I discovered Bolt.new, I was able to finally start my project journey. Honestly, Bolt has made my dream of creating a webapp a reality.

What it does

Nosh is an AI-powered kitchen companion that brings all your food and nutrition management into one seamless app. Nosh tracks your pantry, fridge, and freezer inventory with smart expiry alerts, using AI to detect items from photos or grocery receipts, so you don’t have to enter everything manually. Just scan your meal to instantly analyze its nutrition, log it automatically, and keep your meal history organized.

Nosh generates creative, personalized recipes based on the ingredients you already have, your dietary preferences, and allergies, so you can enjoy new meal ideas every day and reduce food waste. The app offers personalized meal planning, daily nutrition tracking, and clear progress bars, with recommended calorie and macronutrient targets tailored to your age, gender, weight, and activity level. You can easily browse a recipe collection with advanced search, filter by meal type, see nutrition progress, and view AI-generated meal images. Batch-add inventory, manage storage locations, and get weekly meal planning and analytics, all designed to help you eat smarter, save money, and waste less.

How we built it

I started the project using Bolt.new, which helped me quickly design a web app layout that matched my vision and the app’s core features. Bolt.new handled the initial website design so well that I barely needed to tweak the layout, giving me a solid foundation to build out each feature one by one. Bolt.new made setting up integrations so much easier for me. I connected my app to Netlify for hosting, Supabase for my database and authentication, and linked everything to GitHub, all in just a few clicks. This made the whole setup process smooth and let me focus on development. I also used 21st.dev to add some interesting code blocks to enhance the webapp appearance.

To test development versions of the app directly on my phone instantly without publishing live, I used Cursor for some code updates and adjustments. I also used tools like ChatGPT, Canva, Midjourney, and Gemini to design characters, create images, and videos for the app. Once everything was in place, with a single click on Bolt.new, I was able to publish and successfully deploy the web app on Netlify.

Halfway through the hackathon, I realized I could do better than my original landing page. I jumped into bolt.new and started playing around with different ideas, that’s the beauty of using Bolt. Building something new doesn’t take weeks anymore, it just takes hours. Before I knew it, Bolt had helped me come up with a design I really liked, and I could keep improving it by adding details and personal touches. Thanks to the partnership between bolt.new and 21st.dev, integrating 21st.dev components was incredibly smooth and gave my project a real edge.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges was handling the intricate AI processing on the backend using edge functions. Early on, the AI often struggled to accurately recognize items in photos, which meant I needed to make frequent changes and run lots of tests on the edge function code. Debugging and refining are one of the most challenging parts of the development.

Another major hurdle was optimizing the AI recipe generation. It was challenging to ensure the AI considered users’ dietary preferences, allergies, and actual inventory amounts while still producing creative recipes that aren’t found in typical cookbooks. Fine-tuning the OpenAI API and recipe generation algorithm involved a lot of back-and-forth, with two major versions developed before finding the right balance between speed and reliability. Overall, perfecting these core AI features took extensive testing and constant tweaking.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Just a year ago, building a functional web app felt like an impossible dream. I never would’ve imagined I could actually make something that does exactly what I wanted. But with bolt.new, I was able to bring my idea to life, it really reignited a dream I once thought was out of reach.

Another accomplishment was finally finding the right balance between speed and quality in AI recipe generation. After a lot of trial and error, I was finally able to bring everything together, the AI could now generate the right amount and type of recipes based on my dietary preferences and available ingredients, and it actually worked. Building out each AI feature step by step, then seeing them all work together smoothly, was a major milestone.

Using the app myself throughout development, I saw firsthand how much it improved my understanding of daily nutrition and inspired me to cook new meals with what I already had. Reaching the point where Nosh could truly help reduce waste, create meal inspiration, and bring all these tools into one app felt like achieving my original goal, and it’s something I’m genuinely proud of.

What we learned

Through building Nosh, I learned how transformative a tool like Bolt.new can be for getting an idea off the ground quickly. Bolt.new helped me get past that overwhelming blank page moment by giving me a solid starting point, so I could actually start building my project instead of just staring at a scary empty screen. It allowed me to focus on my concept while handling both front-end and back-end design, taking the stress out of initial setup. I learned to use Supabase edge functions for secure data storage, user authentication, and finally got comfortable to connect everything together. Tuning the OpenAI API and understanding how Supabase syncs between the backend and frontend deepened my technical skills.

Using creative tools like OpenAI, Midjourney, and Gemini, I learned new ways to design and produce content, from generating characters and images to creating videos. Connecting a domain and deploying with Netlify was surprisingly straightforward, and Bolt.new made it easy to test and iterate on landing pages and designs. Integrating features from partner tools like 21st.dev for animated web features, and learning from Bolt’s weekly live sessions, turned the whole process into an ongoing learning journey. Overall, I discovered how much faster and more creative modern no-code and AI-driven tools make building a real product.

What's next for Nosh - AI Powered Kitchen Companion

Looking ahead, I plan to add new features to make Nosh even more useful and seamless in daily life. One key goal is integrating in-app Grocery Purchases, so users can generate a shopping list and order ingredients directly through the app, using third-party services like Instacart for next-day delivery. This will make meal planning and shopping fully integrated, saving time and effort.

Another major update will be shared family accounts, letting families share inventory, shopping lists, and recipes within a single household. Family members can invite each other, generate new recipes, tag one another for meal inspiration, and manage shopping together, all from one app. The family admin will have the ability to shop for everyone right from their phone.

Community features are also on the way. Nosh will introduce a space where users can share their ingredients, recipes, and meals with others. Weekly cooking challenges will invite users to create dishes using a set list of ingredients and upload their results to the community page. Users can comment, share, and encourage each other’s creations, building a supportive and interactive environment. The community section will also feature daily or regular blog posts with cooking tips, techniques, and useful articles, helping users learn new skills and get inspired, while also attracting more traffic and knowledge-sharing.

Gamification is on the roadmap as well. Users will earn points for using ingredients before they expire, and these points can be redeemed for discounts on kitchenware or groceries in an in-app store. This encourages creativity in the kitchen and helps further reduce food waste.

iOS version is planned. Nosh is currently available as a browser based webapp designed to fit both desktop and mobile. Users can experience mobile standalone version by adding the webapp to their home screen. For a true iOS experience, I will be working on porting Nosh using Expo service.

Finally, I plan to refine and improve the AI recipe generation and nutrition calculations, making them even more reliable and accurate with future updates. These enhancements will make Nosh an even smarter and more supportive kitchen companion.

Challenge Compliance

I’m aiming for the below challenges:

• Deploy Challenge: Use Netlify to deploy your full-stack Bolt.new application - Nosh uses Netlify right from the start to finish. (Team slug: netlify-polydigits)

Original landing page webapp(working webapp with initial landing page design) Netlify link: spectacular-souffle-b8e625.netlify.app

New landing page (new landing page only) Netlify link: iridescent-selkie-1226e2.netlify.app

• Startup Challenge: Use Supabase to prep your Bolt.new project to scale to millions - Nosh uses Supabase solely for Authentication and database, also includes the use of edge functions. (Org slug: ursweylcirmkikguixbp)

REGIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

APAC Winner - The top entry from the Asia-Pacific region that showed standout quality and creativity.

  • Nosh is built in the beautiful city of Melbourne, Australia.

BONUS AWARDS

- Inspirational Story

- Uniquely Useful Tool

- Creative Use of AI

- Most Beautiful UI

- Future Unicorn

-Sharpest Problem Fit

-We Didn’t Know We Needed This

-Most Likely to Get Funded

Disclaimer: Images, videos and sound/music appeared in the webapp and video were made during the hackathon period with AI tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, Gemini, Elevenlabs and Suno, using paid pro plans with commercial usages.

Built With

  • 21st.dev
  • bolt.new
  • canva
  • claude
  • cursor
  • genimi
  • midjourney
  • netlify
  • openai
  • supabase
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