Team spoonacular: David Urbansky

Published December 9, 2016 © MIT

Spoonacular Food Utilities

Spoonacular helps you to manage your food from meal plan to shopping list to cooking.

IntermediateProtip16 hours1,527

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Amazon Alexa Amazon Echo

Software apps and online services

spoonacular Food API

Story

Introduction

Spoonacular's goal is to manage people's relationship with food. That means everything from meal planning, shopping, finding and cooking recipes, learning about ingredients and their nutritional properties to finding healthy grocery products and even good menu items in restaurants.

To accomplish that, spoonacular needs to be everywhere just like food is everywhere. You can access spoonacular via browser, mobile app, pebble smartwatch app, telegram chat, and now using Amazon Alexa.

The Idea

The Echo/Tap/Dot is bound to one location - your home, so I thought about which skills would be helpful when you're at home talking to Alexa. There are already skills that let you find recipes by ingredients and tell you the cooking steps so I did not want to replicate that. I therefore picked commands that no other kitchen skill is able to satisfy to date.

What Can The Skill Do?

Here are the use cases I imagine are realistic and frequent:

Scenario 1: You are looking into your fridge and see that you're out of milk. Now you can easily add milk to your spoonacular shopping list by saying something like "ask spoonacular to add milk to my shopping list". For that skill you will need a free spoonacular account but then it is synced on all devices and it will be on your phone when you're at the grocery store.

Scenario 2: Instead of working, you are daydreaming and wondering what you're having for dinner tonight so you could say "ask spoonacular what is on the meal plan for dinner today". If you have something scheduled on your spoonacular meal planner, Alexa will read you either the recipe title or the ingredients that you have planned.

Scenario 3: Imagine you're cooking but realize that you do not have a certain ingredient at hand. Bummer, dinner is ruined - or is it? There is a chance that spoonacular can help you find a substitute if you say "ask spoonacular for a substitute for butter".

Scenario 4: You are cooking. The next step in the recipe asks for 3 ounces of butter. You get scared about your waistline. You want to make sure you can afford to eat that much so you "ask spoonacular how many calories are in 3 ounces of butter". If you don't like the answer you'll find yourself in a slightly different version of Scenario 3.

Scenario 5: You are cooking a recipe but all the units are metric. Now imagine that for some inexplicable reason you don't understand metric. spoonacular can now come to help you if you summon it by saying "ask spoonacular to convert 200 grams of flour in cups".

Scenario 6: You got everything under control, your chugging along and dinner will turn out to be amazing. You deserve to be amused so "ask spoonacular to crack a joke" and the onions won't be the only thing bringing tears to your eyes. If you don't feel like laughing, why don't you learn something by saying "ask spoonacular to tell me something I don't know"?

Code

{
  "intents": [
    {
      "intent": "GetJoke",
      "slots": []
    },
     {
      "intent": "GetFact",
      "slots": []
    },
    {
      "intent": "GetShoppingListInfo",
      "slots": []
    },
    {
      "intent": "GetMealPlanInfo",
      "slots": [
         {
          "name": "Date",
          "type": "AMAZON.DATE"
        },
         {
          "name": "Meal",
          "type": "MEAL"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "intent": "Convert",
      "slots": [
         {
          "name": "SourceAmount",
          "type": "AMAZON.NUMBER"
        },
        {
          "name": "SourceUnit",
          "type": "UNIT"
        },
        {
          "name": "TargetUnit",
          "type": "UNIT"
        },
        {
          "name": "Ingredient",
          "type": "INGREDIENT"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "intent": "GetNutrition",
      "slots": [
         {
          "name": "Amount",
          "type": "AMAZON.NUMBER"
        },
        {
          "name": "Unit",
          "type": "UNIT"
        },
        {
          "name": "Nutrient",
          "type": "NUTRIENT"
        },
        {
          "name": "Ingredient",
          "type": "INGREDIENT"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "intent": "AddToShoppingList",
      "slots": [
         {
          "name": "Amount",
          "type": "AMAZON.NUMBER"
        },
        {
          "name": "Unit",
          "type": "UNIT"
        },
        {
          "name": "Ingredient",
          "type": "INGREDIENT"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "intent": "GetIngredientSubstitutes",
      "slots": [       
        {
          "name": "Ingredient",
          "type": "INGREDIENT"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

GetJoke tell me a joke
GetJoke crack a joke
GetJoke tell me something funny
GetJoke tell a joke
GetFact tell me a fact
GetFact tell me a random fact
GetFact tell me a fact about food
GetFact tell me a random fact about food
GetFact tell me a food fact
GetFact tell me something I don't know
GetFact tell me something I do not know
GetShoppingListInfo what is on my shopping list
GetShoppingListInfo what's on my shopping list
GetShoppingListInfo what is on the shopping list
GetShoppingListInfo what's on the shopping list
GetShoppingListInfo my shopping list
GetMealPlanInfo what is on the meal plan {Date} for {Meal}
GetMealPlanInfo what's on the meal plan {Date} for {Meal}
GetMealPlanInfo what is on the meal plan on {Date} for {Meal}
GetMealPlanInfo what's on the meal plan on {Date} for {Meal}
GetMealPlanInfo what is on the meal plan {Meal} on {Date}
GetMealPlanInfo what's on the meal plan {Meal} on {Date}
GetMealPlanInfo what is on the meal plan {Meal} {Date}
GetMealPlanInfo what's on the meal plan {Meal} {Date}
GetMealPlanInfo what is for {Meal} {Date}
GetMealPlanInfo what is for {Meal} on {Date}
GetMealPlanInfo what's for {Meal} {Date}
GetMealPlanInfo what's for {Meal} on {Date}
Convert convert {SourceAmount} {SourceUnit} {Ingredient} to {TargetUnit}
Convert convert {SourceAmount} {SourceUnit} of {Ingredient} to {TargetUnit}
Convert convert {SourceAmount} {SourceUnit} {Ingredient} in {TargetUnit}
Convert convert {SourceAmount} {SourceUnit} of {Ingredient} in {TargetUnit}
Convert convert {SourceAmount} {Ingredient} to {TargetUnit}
Convert convert {SourceAmount} {Ingredient} in {TargetUnit}
GetNutrition {Nutrient} in {Amount} {Unit} {Ingredient}
GetNutrition {Nutrient} in {Amount} {Unit} of {Ingredient}
GetNutrition {Nutrient} in {Amount} {Ingredient}
GetNutrition how much {Nutrient} is in {Amount} {Unit} of {Ingredient}
GetNutrition how much {Nutrient} is in {Amount} {Ingredient}
GetNutrition how many {Nutrient} are in {Amount} {Unit} of {Ingredient}
GetNutrition how many {Nutrient} are in {Amount} {Ingredient}
AddToShoppingList add {Amount} {Unit} of {Ingredient} to my shopping list
AddToShoppingList add {Amount} {Unit} of {Ingredient} to the shopping list
AddToShoppingList add {Amount} {Unit} {Ingredient} to my shopping list
AddToShoppingList add {Amount} {Unit} {Ingredient} to the shopping list
AddToShoppingList add {Amount} {Ingredient} to my shopping list
AddToShoppingList add {Amount} {Ingredient} to the shopping list
AddToShoppingList add {Ingredient} to my shopping list
AddToShoppingList add {Ingredient} to the shopping list
GetIngredientSubstitutes what is a good substitute for {Ingredient}
GetIngredientSubstitutes what's a good substitute for {Ingredient}
GetIngredientSubstitutes how can I substitute {Ingredient}
GetIngredientSubstitutes how to substitute {Ingredient}
GetIngredientSubstitutes a good substitute for {Ingredient}
GetIngredientSubstitutes a substitute for {Ingredient}
GetIngredientSubstitutes what is a good replacement for {Ingredient}
GetIngredientSubstitutes what's a good replacement for {Ingredient}
GetIngredientSubstitutes how can I replace {Ingredient}
GetIngredientSubstitutes how to replace {Ingredient}
GetIngredientSubstitutes a good replacement for {Ingredient}
GetIngredientSubstitutes a replacement for {Ingredient}

Credits

David Urbansky

1 project • 2 followers

Thanks to Crystal Schlegelmilch.

Spoonacular Food Utilities

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Story

Introduction

The Idea

What Can The Skill Do?

Schematics

Workflow from user request to alexa to spoonacular API

Code

Intent Schema

Sample Utterances

Credits

David Urbansky

Comments

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Spoonacular Food Utilities

Spoonacular Food Utilities

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Story

Introduction

The Idea

What Can The Skill Do?

Schematics

Workflow from user request to alexa to spoonacular API

Code

Intent Schema

Sample Utterances

Credits

David Urbansky

Comments

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