Your first recipe

You are signed in and looking at the Kitchen, with the app connected on your computer (steps 2 and 3 of the Quickstart). Recipes run there, so without it the Kitchen asks you to install the app first. This page walks one recipe from the shelf to the finished result.

What a recipe is

A recipe is a set of steps written down once so you can run them again. Every step is visible before anything starts. Some steps do work, and some stop and wait for you. You can read what a recipe does before it runs.

Where recipes live

Open the Kitchen from your dashboard. The icon rail on the side has a Cookbook button, described as “whole recipes, yours and the catalog's.” Click it and the shelf opens. You can search recipes, filter them by category, and sort them by Most installed or Newest.

Click a recipe card to preview it. The preview shows the recipe's steps as a map, a short description, and four counts: writes, network, shell and system. Those counts tell you what the recipe is able to touch before you run it.

The recipe to try first: Scout & Brief

Scout & Brief turns a research question into a sourced brief. It splits the question into angles, researches each one, merges the findings, checks the result with you, then shows you the brief and saves it when you approve. It asks you one question and one approval, so you see both kinds of stop in a single run.

Pick a question you actually want answered. “What are the tradeoffs of moving our docs to a static site generator?” works. The recipe starts from your question and gives you nothing useful if the question is vague.

Start it

Type your question into the chat box on the Kitchen's landing screen, but don't press Enter: Enter sends it to the chat instead. Press pick a recipe, beside the box. The Cookbook opens with a starting from line that quotes your words back. Select Scout & Brief and press start with this. The button reads starting… while the run is set up, and if it can't start, the reason shows under the button.

The Cookbook button on the icon rail opens the same shelf for browsing. To start a run from your question, use pick a recipe. If you would rather look first, press just show me the recipe. With no question typed, the main button reads lay out on the mat and puts the recipe on the Kitchen's canvas for you to read or edit.

While it runs

Open Runs on the icon rail for the list of every run, “open, parked, finished.” Each run carries a status word: running, waiting on you, paused, stopped, failed or finished.

Inside a run, each step shows its name and how long it took. A progress bar shows how far along the run is, with elapsed time and cost beside it. A step that needs you carries a marker labelled Needs your input.

When it stops to ask you something

An ask is a step that parks the run until you answer. In Scout & Brief it comes after the research, and reads: “Here's the synthesis. Does this match your angle, or is there anything to add?” The run shows as waiting on you in the Runs list until you reply.

The question appears as a card titled decision needed. If the question is about earlier work, that work is shown on the card above the question, so you can read what you are answering. If a step produced no text, the card says so instead of showing an empty box.

You answer in one of two ways:

• Click choose on one of the listed options. The recipe's own recommended option is labelled recipe's pick.
• Type your own answer in the box that says or type an answer… and click send.

Once you answer, the card changes to answered and keeps your words on screen. The run picks up from there. If the answer is rejected, the card tells you why and offers retry.

What you get at the end

The brief is shown to you as a finished document, and once you approve it it is saved to your project. The run moves to finished in the Runs list. Because the recipe stays on the shelf, you can run it again with a new question whenever you want.

If something stops

A run that shows stopped: a decision changed was halted because a decision it depended on changed while it ran. A run that shows failed did not finish.