MealTab Beta Tester Guide

Overall progress0 of 0 tested

👋

First launch & setup

Splash + 9-step setup

Splash screen shows the MealTab logo, wordmark, tagline and three fanned screenshots (Home, Shop, Savings)

Should not say MealGenius anywhere

"Get started" and "Skip, use defaults" buttons are both visible on the splash

Tapping "Get started" begins onboarding at Step 1 of 9

Tapping "Skip, use defaults" completes onboarding immediately with sensible defaults and lands on Home

No steps in between - this is a full bypass, not just the first one

Nav bar is hidden during onboarding, and reappears once setup completes

Back arrow (top-left) returns to the previous step correctly, all the way back to the splash

Progress dots and the "Step X of 9" label track your position correctly

Step 1 of 9 - intro screen shows a sample "Budget Remaining" preview card; Continue advances to Step 2

Step 2 of 9 - What's your name? - text field works

Step 3 of 9 - Diet & allergies - picking a diet (Omnivore, Pescatarian, Vegetarian, Vegan, Keto, Paleo) highlights it, and allergen chips toggle independently

Step 4 of 9 - Anything to avoid? - dislike chips toggle on/off, and typing a custom dislike adds it as its own removable chip

Step 5 of 9 - What are your goals? - tapping goals ranks them in the order tapped, each showing a number badge

Step 6 of 9 - Household size - +/- buttons update the number

Step 7 of 9 - "Which meals do you usually plan?" - toggling Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner works, and at least one always stays selected

Step 8 of 9 - "Your usual weekly budget" - slider and quick-pick preset buttons both work and stay in sync

Step 9 of 9 - Get real prices - the ZIP field is visible immediately, no extra tap needed to reveal it

Entering a valid ZIP and tapping "Find my store" shows a green "Connected" card with your store name

Entering a ZIP with no nearby store shows a message suggesting a receipt scan instead

Store-family name chips (Kroger, Ralphs, Fred Meyer, King Soopers, etc.) show below the connect card

Tapping "Finish" on the last step completes onboarding and lands on the Home screen

There's no separate "want updates / email" step anymore - Finish is the last tap

Name, diet, household size, and budget entered during onboarding all show up correctly in Profile afterward

Key data persistence check

🏠

Today dashboard

Hero savings card, upcoming meals, pantry glance

Greeting shows your name correctly

Hero card's left side shows meals-planned and items-to-buy counts; tapping either jumps to Plan or Shop

Hero card's right side shows $ remaining (or over) as a bar, not a ring, plus "X% spent"

When you're over budget, the card shows a "Why?" button and switches to an over-budget color/label

Checking items off on Shop and returning to Home animates the items-to-buy number from the old count to the new one

Upcoming Meals section shows the next several planned meals as a horizontal scrolling row of cards

The very next upcoming meal is highlighted with a green border and an "UP NEXT" badge (not just a plain day label)

Tapping a meal card opens the recipe detail sheet

"Pantry at a glance" card shows a % ring and "ingredients for N meals this week"; tapping it opens Pantry

With no meals planned, a "Smart Meal Planner" banner replaces Upcoming Meals with a "Generate Plan" button

📅

7-day meal plan

Day cards, add/remove, share

7 day cards visible, today's card highlighted with TODAY badge

Tapping a meal opens the recipe detail sheet

Empty slots show + Add meal, tapping opens the meal picker

Picking a recipe adds it to the correct slot

X button removes a meal from its slot

Share button in the plan header copies your meal plan to clipboard or opens iOS share sheet

Should show a confirmation toast on non-iOS

Smart Plan banner opens the Smart Planner

Today's meals show a "Skip" button (not the trash icon future days use)

Tapping Skip on a meal with ingredients opens a sheet offering "Add to Leftovers" or "Just skip, don't add"

Tapping Skip again on an already-skipped meal un-skips it directly, no sheet

Skipped meals don't count toward the week's budget total

✨

Smart meal planning

5-step wizard + usual-settings fast path + pantry check

Smart Planner opens as a full-screen sheet above the nav bar

Nav bar is still tappable while the planner is open

Step 1 opens on a compact "Using your usual settings" summary (e.g. "Dinner · $160 budget"), not an editable form

This is the new default - it should NOT look like a fresh question

Tapping "Change for this week" reveals the date-range and meal-type editor, with a small "For this plan only" label next to "Which meals?"

Tapping "Use my usual settings →" on the summary skips straight to a generated plan, without visiting any other step

On the expanded editor, toggling meals away from your usual count shows an inline "just for this week" budget slider

Progress dots and the "Step X of 5" label track your position correctly through the wizard

Step 2 (cook time) options highlight when tapped; step 3 (budget)'s slider and presets update the on-screen number live

Step 3's budget copy makes clear the number applies "just for this week," not your saved budget

Step 4 - toggling "Side with dinner" on/off works, and "Customize which meals" reveals per-meal side toggles

Generating shows a single, consistent loading screen (ring spinner) the whole time

Should not flash to a different-looking screen partway through

If your plan needs pantry staples (oils, spices, canned goods), an "Already have any of these?" screen appears before results

Should only interrupt the first time, or when the stock-up amount is large

Results screen shows one connected card: cost/budget stats flowing straight into "you already have / grocery items / avg cook time," with no visible gap or separate floating box

"More plan details" on that card reveals pantry stock-up, total at checkout, and the familiar-vs-adventurous breakdown

If you changed meals or budget for this plan, the results screen notes "Your saved usual settings haven't changed" - if you didn't change anything, that note doesn't show

Apply this plan saves meals and closes the planner; Regenerate produces a new plan using the same loading screen

📖

Recipe browser + detail

Category grid, search, filters, sort, rating, save

Recipes screen defaults to a "Browse by category" grid of photo tiles (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Sides, Quick, Budget, Saved, etc.), each showing a live recipe count

Tapping a category tile filters to that category's flat recipe list; "See all recipes" shows everything

Saved and Imported tiles only appear once you've actually saved or imported at least one recipe - not before

Search bar filters recipes as you type, from either the category grid or a flat list

Filter chips (All, Saved, Imported, plus category chips) work and match the category grid's own filtering

Tapping a recipe opens the detail sheet with image, time, macros, ingredients and steps

Heart/Save button turns red (not green) and fills in when tapped, and reverts when tapped again

Visual feedback is immediate

The Saved category with zero saved recipes shows its own "No saved recipes yet" message - not a generic "no results" or an Imported-tab-sounding message

Add to plan button works

Recipe sheet shows a compact ☆☆☆☆☆ Rate this recipe button when unrated

Tapping Rate this recipe expands the star picker and notes field

Tapping a star saves the rating immediately and updates the button to show your stars

Save note button saves the note and collapses the editor

After rating, the recipe shows your stars and a preview of your note with an Edit link

Tapping Edit reopens the stars and notes

Ratings and notes persist after closing and reopening the recipe

When a meal has a paired side dish, "Served with" shows a solid green chip that clearly looks tappable

Should not blend in with the light-green time/price/calorie pills above it

Tapping the side dish chip opens that side dish's own recipe detail page

If a recipe's photo fails to load, it falls back to the emoji cleanly (no broken image icon, no error)

Tapping "Sort" on the Recipes screen opens a sheet with 7 options: Relevance, Highest rated, Recently cooked, Quickest, Cheapest, Fewest calories, Most pantry matches

Picking a sort option (e.g. Cheapest) reorders the recipe list to match and switches to a flat list view

With a non-default sort active, the Sort pill turns green and the result count line shows which sort is applied (e.g. "42 results · cheapest")

Tapping "All categories" resets the sort back to Relevance

🛒

Smart grocery list

Auto-generated from your meal plan

Shopping list generates from your plan, grouped by category

Dairy, Frozen, and Canned items show up on the list, not just Produce/Protein/Pantry/Spices

Previously these three categories could go missing entirely

Plain water ("water", "warm water", "boiling water") never appears as a priced shopping-list item

Recipes that call for it as an ingredient line should just skip it

Tapping a checkbox checks it off instantly

Checking every single item on the list (including anything you added manually) brings "remaining" to exactly 0

Tapping a price opens a price editor at the bottom

Typing an item name in "Add item manually" and tapping Add actually adds it to the list

Previously this silently failed

A manually-added item shows a tappable price (starts at ~$0.00) that you can set

Removing a manually-added item (×) works

If your store is connected (Settings > Profile), "Refresh prices" updates items with real store prices

Copy list button works

📋

Pantry, Leftovers, History, Summary

Pantry screen loads and shows ingredients - items you've checked stay checked

Leftovers screen loads

Meal History screen loads

Weekly Summary screen loads

Weekly Summary shows a "Where this week's total goes" bar (Food this week vs. Stocking the pantry), and the two numbers add up to the total above

Weekly Summary's "Daily spend" bar chart shows one bar per day, today highlighted, roughly matching what each day's meals actually cost

Weekly Summary's "Meals by type" donut and "Best value meals this week" list both show real data from your plan, not zeros

Leftovers screen shows ingredients added from a meal you marked skipped on the Plan screen

⚙️

Profile & account

Budget, name, diet, household, meals

Weekly budget card at the TOP of Profile is an inline slider + preset buttons - not a tap-to-open sheet like the rows below it

Below the budget card, Profile shows rows for Name, Diet, Food preferences, Household, Meals, and Email

"Cooking skill" is no longer a field anywhere in the app

Tapping Name opens a bottom sheet with a text input and Save button

Tapping Diet opens a bottom sheet with styled diet options (6: Omnivore, Pescatarian, Vegetarian, Vegan, Keto, Paleo)

Tapping Household opens a bottom sheet with a large number and +/- buttons

Tapping Meals opens a bottom sheet letting you toggle Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner - this is the standing default used everywhere (Smart Plan, the manual weekly plan, Add to plan)

This used to be onboarding-only with no way back to it

All changes persist after closing and reopening the app

About screen shows the mealtab logo mark (not stretched or pixelated)

About screen wordmark is all lowercase: mealtab

Redo setup triggers onboarding with the nav bar hidden

Profile shows a store connection option (Live Grocery Prices); connecting with a ZIP works the same way as onboarding's "Get real prices" step

Once connected, Profile shows the store name and a Disconnect option

Profile shows a "Notifications" row with an On/Off status

Tapping Notifications → Enable notifications asks for permission; once granted, three reminder toggles appear (weekly planning, log today's meals, leftovers expiring)

On iPhone, this only works if MealTab has been added to the Home Screen first - in a regular Safari tab it should show as unsupported, not broken

Turning a reminder toggle on/off saves immediately - closing and reopening Notifications shows the change held

A test reminder (e.g. an empty week ahead) actually shows up as a real notification on your device

These are local-only - they fire while MealTab is open or was recently open, not from a server, and can't wake the app from fully closed

🔗

Add custom recipes

URL import + manual entry

Import screen has both a URL field and a manual entry form

Manual entry: fill in name, type, ingredients, steps - Save works

Manually saved recipe appears in Recipes and can be planned

💾

Data stays put

Close and reopen to check

Meal plan is still there after closing and reopening

Profile settings persist after restart

Saved recipes persist after restart

Recipe ratings and notes persist after restart

Pantry selections persist after restart

!

URL recipe import fails on AllRecipes and NYT Cooking

These sites block external fetches. Use manual entry instead.

!

Recipe photos can take a little while to appear for newer recipes

You'll see a soft pulsing placeholder while a photo is being fetched. Only flag it here if a recipe is stuck pulsing for several minutes, or shows a broken-image icon instead of its emoji.

!

Notifications are local-only, not server push

They fire while MealTab is open or was recently open on your device - they can't reach you while it's fully closed. On iPhone they only work once MealTab has been added to the Home Screen.

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