plan-to-eat-cli

Use when the user wants to interact with Plan to Eat (plantoeat.com) — meal plan, recipes, planner notes/ingredients/leftovers, freezer, shopping list — and the plan-to-eat CLI is available but the plan-to-eat MCP server is NOT connected. Same capabilities as the MCP server, driven through the shell. Triggers on "what's on my meal plan", "plan X for Wednesday dinner", "add a note to Tuesday breakfast", "move dinner to Friday", "freeze leftovers", "what's in the freezer", "what's on my shopping list", "add milk to the shopping list" — when those must be answered with shell commands.

The plan-to-eat CLI exposes the same 36 capabilities as the plan-to-eat MCP server, as subcommands. Use this skill when you have a shell but no plan-to-eat__* tools.

If the MCP tools are available, use them instead — see the plan-to-eat skill. They avoid a subprocess per call and return structured JSON directly.

Setup check

bash

plan-to-eat --version

Command not found — the CLI isn't on PATH. Work down this list before giving up:

1. Run it without installing. The CLI ships in the npm package and needs Node 18+:

   bash

   npx -y -p plan-to-eat-mcp@0.7.3 plan-to-eat --version # x-release-please-version
   

   Note the -p. The package exposes two bins, and the one named plan-to-eat-mcp — what plain npx plan-to-eat-mcp resolves to — is the MCP server, which will sit and wait on stdio. -p plan-to-eat-mcp plan-to-eat is what selects the CLI. If this works, prefix every command in this skill the same way.

2. Install it properly. Faster than npx per call, and puts plan-to-eat on PATH. Show the user this rather than running it yourself — it writes outside the working directory:

   bash

   npm i -g plan-to-eat-mcp@0.7.3 # x-release-please-version
   

3. Working from a clone? node <repo>/dist/cli/main.js --version. If dist/ is missing, the build step was skipped — npm install && npm run build in the repo, then retry.

4. Node missing entirely (node --version fails) — stop and tell the user; don't install a runtime for them.

Keep the version pinned in whichever of these you pass on. npx -y and a bare npm i -g run whatever the registry serves at that moment, so an unpinned command picks up every future publish silently. Releases are published from CI with npm trusted publishing, so each tarball carries a SLSA provenance attestation binding it to the source repository and the commit it was built from; npm audit signatures checks the copy that actually got installed.

"Missing PLAN_TO_EAT_USERNAME and/or PLAN_TO_EAT_PASSWORD" — credentials aren't set. They come from the environment or a .env in the working directory:

Var	Required	Default
PLAN_TO_EAT_USERNAME	yes	—
PLAN_TO_EAT_PASSWORD	yes	—
PLAN_TO_EAT_SESSION_FILE	no	~/.plan-to-eat-session.json

Ask the user to set them. Never ask them to paste a password into the conversation, and never put credentials in a command you run — no PLAN_TO_EAT_PASSWORD=... plan-to-eat ... one-liners, they land in shell history and in the transcript.

If none of this works, point the user at the project README rather than trying to scrape the web app.

Using it

Always pass --json. The default output is a human-readable table meant for the user's eyes; --json gives you the raw payload to reason over. Show the user the table form only if they asked to see it.

bash

plan-to-eat <command> [args] --json

Names map from the tool names one-to-one: add_planner_recipe is add-planner-recipe. Both spellings work.

Discover, don't guess:

bash

plan-to-eat --help                      # every command, grouped
plan-to-eat add-planner-recipe --help   # arguments, which are positional, enum values

Argument forms:

• Positional or flagged — get-recipe 123 = get-recipe --id 123. --help says which arguments are positional and in what order.
• Flags accept dashes or underscores: --start-date = --start_date.
• Booleans are bare flags: --include_consumed.
• Arrays repeat, or take JSON: --event_ids 11 --event_ids 22 = --event_ids '[11,22]'.
• Objects take JSON: --ingredients '{"title":"bread","amount":"2"}' (repeat per item).

Quote anything with spaces, especially note and ingredient text: plan-to-eat add-planner-note "Defrost chicken" 2026-05-04 breakfast.

Exit codes: 0 success, 1 for bad arguments, missing credentials, or an upstream error. Read stderr — argument errors name the offending flag and the expected type.

Core concepts

Recipe — numeric id. list-recipes --json returns the catalog (~500 summaries); get-recipe <id> --json gives directions, comments, and the full ingredient list. Recipe IDs are not guessable — look them up first.

Planner event — one calendar entry: { id, date, section, kind, recipe_id?, description?, servings }. kind is recipe, note, or ingredient. section is breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snacks. date is YYYY-MM-DD.

Frozen recipe — { id, recipe_id, count, servings, frozen_on }. count is portions remaining, servings is per-portion size. Consuming is a soft-delete: the API zeroes count and keeps the row.

Shopping list line — one row of the list, addressed by an item_ids array, not a scalar id: Plan to Eat merges duplicate ingredients into one line that keeps every underlying row id. Pass the whole array to update or remove it. A line also names its store (store_title; store_id is null for the account's default store) and aisle (grocery_category_title), and recipe_ids says which planned recipes pulled it in.

A "week" is whatever 7 days the user means. get-planner-week <start> runs to start + 6 days unless you pass an end date. If the user says "this week" without a start day, convert relative to today.

Common workflows

Resolving a recipe by name is the usual first step. Filter the catalog rather than eyeballing it:

bash

plan-to-eat list-recipes --json \
  | jq -r --arg q 'lasagna' '.[] | select(.title|ascii_downcase|contains($q|ascii_downcase)) | "\(.id)\t\(.title)"'

If jq isn't available, pipe to node -e or read the JSON yourself.

Pass the search term with --arg, never inside the filter. --arg hands jq the value as data, so a title with regex characters or an apostrophe is matched literally instead of reparsed. Interpolating it into test("...") silently matches the wrong thing — searching Chicken (Spicy) as a regex finds "Chicken Spicy Wings" and misses the recipe you meant — and a title like Mom's Chili breaks out of the shell quoting entirely.

"What's on the meal plan this week?"

bash

plan-to-eat get-planner-week 2026-05-04 --json

Recipe events arrive with recipe_title already joined — no second lookup needed. Group by date, then section, for a readable answer.

"Plan [recipe] for Wednesday dinner"

bash

plan-to-eat add-planner-recipe <recipe_id> 2026-05-06 dinner --json

The response carries the new event id. If the user named a servings count, follow with set-planner-servings <event_id> <n>.

"Add a prep note / a grocery item to a slot"

bash

plan-to-eat add-planner-note "Defrost chicken" 2026-05-04 breakfast --json
plan-to-eat add-planner-ingredient "2 lbs ground beef" 2026-05-06 dinner --json

Use add-planner-ingredient for grocery-style text tied to a meal. For the real shopping list, see the shopping list workflows below.

"Move Tuesday dinner to Wednesday"

bash

plan-to-eat get-planner-week <week start> --json     # find the event id
plan-to-eat move-planner-event <event_id> 2026-05-06 dinner --json

"Change that meal to 4 servings"

bash

plan-to-eat set-planner-servings <event_id> 4 --json

Recipe events only.

"Edit that note to say X"

bash

plan-to-eat update-planner-entry-text <id> "X" --json

Note the asymmetry: notes are created with title text but edited through description. The CLI hides most of this, but it's why the read shape shows note text under description.

"Is [recipe] already planned this week?"

bash

plan-to-eat find-planned-dates <recipe_id> --start-date 2026-05-04 --end-date 2026-05-10 --json

Do this before scheduling if the user is trying to avoid repeats.

"Plan Tuesday's lasagna as leftovers Thursday"

bash

plan-to-eat add-leftover-meal <source_event_id> 2026-05-07 dinner --json

One call — it duplicates and moves. Omit the date/section to leave the leftover in the source slot. For a plain copy, duplicate-planner-event <id>.

"Reorder breakfast: pancakes first, then bacon"

bash

plan-to-eat reorder-planner-events --event_ids <pancakes> --event_ids <bacon> --json

All ids must share a date and section.

"Freeze 3 portions of last night's chili"

bash

plan-to-eat freeze-recipe-portions <recipe_id> <event_id> 3 1.0 --json
plan-to-eat list-frozen-recipes --json      # confirm, and get the new entry id

event_id is the planner event the portions came from.

"What's in the freezer?" / "We ate the freezer chili"

bash

plan-to-eat list-frozen-recipes --json
plan-to-eat list-frozen-recipes --include_consumed --json   # with history
plan-to-eat delete-frozen-recipe <frozen entry id> --json

Freezer entries carry recipe_id, not titles — get-recipe each one if the user wants names.

"What's on the shopping list?"

bash

plan-to-eat get-shopping-list

The table is already sorted by store. For a store-by-store readback:

bash

plan-to-eat get-shopping-list --json | jq -r 'group_by(.store_title)[] | "\(.[0].store_title):", (.[] | "  \(.amount) \(.unit) \(.title)")'

"Add sliced almonds and a jar of tahini to the list"

bash

plan-to-eat add-shopping-list-items --items '[{"title":"Sliced almonds"},{"title":"Tahini","amount":"1","unit":"jar"}]'

Leave category_id and store_id off unless the user named a store or aisle — Plan to Eat then guesses the aisle and reuses the store last used for that item. To honor "get it at Trader Joe's", resolve the id first with plan-to-eat list-stores (aisles: plan-to-eat list-grocery-categories).

"Move the almonds to Costco" / "make it two jars"

bash

plan-to-eat get-shopping-list --json \
  | jq --arg q 'almond' '.[] | select(.title|ascii_downcase|contains($q|ascii_downcase)) | .item_ids'
plan-to-eat update-shopping-list-items --item_ids '[511232505]' --store_id 138079
plan-to-eat update-shopping-list-items --item_ids '[511232505]' --amount 2 --unit jars

--store_id / --category_id on their own re-file any number of lines at once; editing text (--title, --amount, --unit, --note) works on one line and is refused if the ids span two. Only pass what changes. A text edit collapses a merged line into one row, so read item_ids back off the result.

"Take the bananas off the list"

bash

plan-to-eat remove-shopping-list-items --item_ids '[518771191]'

Soft delete — restore-shopping-list-items --item_ids '[...]' undoes it. Nothing lists removed lines, so echo the ids back to the user if they might want them.

"Remove that from the plan"

bash

plan-to-eat delete-planner-event <id> --json

Gotchas

• Never interpolate the user's text into a command string. Titles, notes and ingredient lines are free text and routinely contain quotes, parentheses and &. Pass them as separate quoted arguments to plan-to-eat, and as --arg values to jq. This is also why the skill uses contains rather than test — a literal substring match has no metacharacters to get wrong.
• section comes back as supper on some accounts. Plan to Eat normalizes to a per-account preference. Always send dinner; treat supper as the same slot when reading.
• Note and ingredient text lives in description on read, not title — title is null for notes. Table output already accounts for this.
• Create and duplicate can return null. The upstream API returns empty bodies, so the client recovers the new event by diffing the event list before and after. A concurrent change can defeat that. Re-run get-planner-week to find the event rather than assuming the write failed.
• Convert relative dates yourself. "Tuesday" must become a real YYYY-MM-DD before it reaches the CLI. The date check only validates shape, so 2026-13-99 passes argument parsing and fails upstream.
• add-planner-recipe won't create a recipe. For something not in the book, create-recipe first, or use a note/ingredient entry for freeform text.
• find-planned-dates is keyed on recipe_id, not title. To search by name, filter list-recipes.
• A shopping list line is item_ids, plural — one line can hold several row ids. Naming any one of them affects the whole line, so precision isn't required; but a text edit consolidates a merged line into a single row (keeping the combined quantity), so don't assume every id you sent survives. Re-read item_ids from the output.
• store_id: null isn't "no store", it's the account's default store, and store_title names it. Report the title, not the id.
• Removed shopping list lines vanish. Nothing can list them, so restore-shopping-list-items only works with ids you kept from before.
• Writes are real and immediate. There's no dry-run and no undo. Confirm with the user before deleting anything you didn't just create.

Full reference

docs/TOOLS.md documents every command's arguments, return shape, and quirks.