How to plan a week of meals with an AI assistant in 15 minutes

Meal planning is the task people tell us they hate most, and it is also the one where a general AI assistant is genuinely useful. It is not magic: the assistant does not know your family. But it is very good at the boring part, which is turning a list of constraints into a calendar.

Start with constraints, not recipes

Open whatever assistant you already have (the one in your phone, in your search engine or in your office suite all work the same way for this) and describe the week before you ask for anything. A prompt that works for us looks like this: "Plan dinners for Monday to Sunday for two adults and one child. We eat chicken, eggs, beans and pasta, no pork. Three dinners must take under 25 minutes. Thursday is leftovers. Use these ingredients first: half a cabbage, four carrots, a block of feta."

Ask for the plan as a table

Ask for a table with four columns: day, dish, cooking time, main ingredients. Tables are easier to scan than paragraphs, and most assistants can produce them on request. If a day looks wrong, say so in plain words: "Swap Tuesday for something vegetarian" is enough.

Turn the plan into a shopping list

Once the plan looks right, ask: "Write a shopping list for this plan grouped by supermarket aisle, and leave out the ingredients I said I already have." Check the quantities yourself. Assistants are good at remembering what you listed but sometimes guess amounts.

What to double-check

• Cooking times. The assistant estimates them; your stove and your knife skills decide the real number.
• Allergies. Always restate them in the prompt. Do not rely on the assistant remembering from last week.
• Repetition. If the plan serves pasta four times, ask for more variety.

Make it repeatable

Save the prompt in a note on your phone. Next week you only change the ingredients line. After a month you will have a small library of plans you can reuse without asking at all.