I let ChatGPT Agent find recipes for me — and it was surprisingly good

1. Enable ChatGPT Agent

Firstly, you’ll want to enable Agent mode. Click on the + symbol that’s alongside your prompt box and select Agent mode.

2. Describe the agent’s task

Your agent can perform a variety of tasks that range from researching a topic to ordering a pizza delivery to your door. In this example, we’re skipping the takeout and we will be using ChatGPT agent to help us find recipes and curate a weekly meal plan that we'll cook up in the kitchen ourselves.

To get started straight away, copy and paste the following prompt: Every Monday at 08:00 generate my weekly meal plan. Create it using a combination of recipes from food bloggers, menus of restaurants in my area, and trending recipes on social media. For each week, select recipes that share key ingredients to minimize shopping.

3. Specify your requirements

ChatGPT immediately understood the assignment but raised some important points before it got to work. It asked me if I had any dietary restrictions or preferences and wanted to know when I wanted the meal planning to start.

Answer ChatGPT's questions to get a response that’s more personalized toward your needs. If you want to ensure it has all the context it needs, you can also offer to ask any other questions it may have that could help it deliver a better service. Maybe there are particular cuisines or flavor combinations that really hit the spot.

For this example, I indicated there will not be any dietary restrictions but I requested at least one of the recipes should be vegetarian. Once you're ready, hit continue.

4. Let it run

Once you’ve submitted all the information and specified the task, you can let ChatGPT agent get to work. How long it takes to complete the task depends on its complexity. For a simple weekly recipe generator like the one we’re building, expect the process to take around 2 minutes.

Since I ran the test on a Friday, I got a total of 10 recipes, including ones for a tortilla pizza wrap, chicken power bowl, and a spinach and goat cheese omelette. Delicious!

5. Make adjustments

The key to agent results you’ll actually use is making refinements along the way. I recommend doing a test run of the agent’s task and evaluating its response.

For the weekly recipe generator, I asked ChatGPT to add a master shopping list. It even went ahead and organized it into produce, grains, proteins, dairy, and pantry staples sections to make my shopping more efficient.

Simply type in your prompt and hit enter.

6. Set your schedule

To make sure your agent runs when it suits you best, click on the three dots at the top right of your screen. Click the schedule option and tell ChatGPT how often you want your recipe agent to run.

7. Take your recipe agent to the next level

If you’ve followed each step, you’ll end up with a personalized weekly list of recipes that have some ingredients in common to make shopping and prep time as painless as possible.

Once you get into the right flow, you can continue tweaking your recipe agent to suit your requirements. Some additional things you could consider asking your agent to do are: