Cookwith
Pops
A web app for structured, step-by-step cooking instruction. We built it for Falcon's dad. It turned out to be useful for a lot of people.
Open the live site
01 / The why
Memory makes great food. It makes a fragile archive.
Falcon's dad doesn't cook from recipes. He cooks from memory and intuition, and the things he makes are great. The problem is that nothing he makes is written down anywhere, in any form that the rest of us could repeat without him standing behind us.
Recipe blogs aren't the answer. They bury everything under SEO filler and ad placements. YouTube videos are linear and you can't scrub them while your hands are covered in flour. We wanted a third thing.
Turn tacit knowledge into something you can hand off.
02 / The approach
Cooking as a state machine.
Each step is atomic: you do the thing, you tap the step, you move to the next one. Steps know their own timing, dependencies, and required tools. The app shows you exactly what to do right now, and nothing else.
Hands-free. Voice activation for step transitions, since you're usually holding a spatula. Big visual confirmations for steps that have a critical timing window.
State model
A recipe becomes one decision at a time.
The system is deliberately plain. Finish the action in front of you, confirm it, then let the next action take its place.
- 01
Recipe
Start with the whole dish as an ordered sequence.
- 02
Atomic step
Put one action on screen, with no recipe page to scan.
- 03
Step state
Keep its timing, dependencies, and required tools with it.
- 04
Voice or tap
Confirm the transition without leaving the cooking flow.
- 05
Next step
Replace the finished action with exactly what comes next.
03 / Status
Live at cookwithpops.com
Public now. The family archive is still being made.
In active development. Polishing the recording UX before Falcon sits down with his dad to capture his actual recipes, turning tacit knowledge into something you can hand off.
Live at cookwithpops.com.