How to Set Up a Claude Cooking Assistant That Knows Your Kitchen

Eating is half the battle. You can have a great program, show up to the gym four days a week, and still spin your wheels because dinner is a 9pm panic decision between takeout and cereal. The fix isn't more discipline. It's removing the decision.

That's what a personal cooking assistant does. In about 3 minutes, you can set up a Claude project that knows your kitchen, your equipment, your schedule, and your protein targets. After that, you open it and ask "what can I make tonight?" and it answers with real options built around what you actually have. No more staring into the fridge.

What you need

• A Claude account. The free tier at claude.ai works fine. The assistant lives in a Claude Project, which free accounts can create.
• 3 minutes. The setup is 16 multiple-choice questions. You just tap letters.

That's the whole list. You don't need the Liftaroo app for this part, though the assistant pairs well with the calorie and protein targets you're tracking there.

How the setup works

1. Go to liftaroo.app/claude and copy the setup prompt. It's one button.
2. Paste it into a new Claude chat. Claude will start asking you quick questions, one at a time: how much time you have on a weeknight, what proteins are usually in your fridge, what equipment you own, what you hate about cooking, your goals.
3. Answer the 16 questions. Every one is multiple choice, so you just tap a letter. This is where the assistant learns that you have an air fryer but no patience, or that cleanup is the thing that makes you order out.
4. Copy the instructions Claude generates. When you're done, Claude writes a complete "project instructions" block based on your answers.
5. Create a new Claude Project and paste them in. Go to claude.ai, make a new Project, and paste the block into the custom instructions section. Done. That project is now your cooking assistant, permanently.

What it's like to use

The difference between this and just asking any AI for recipes is the context. A generic chatbot gives you a recipe with 14 ingredients you don't own. Your assistant already knows your kitchen. Some things you can ask it:

• "What can I make tonight?" It suggests 2-3 options using proteins you usually stock, sized to your weeknight time budget.
• "I have chicken thighs, half a bag of spinach, and rice. Go." It builds dinner from exactly that.
• "I need 50 more grams of protein today and I'm tired." It knows your targets and your laziness threshold.
• "Plan three dinners for this week that share ingredients." Less waste, one grocery run.
• "Make it one pan." If cleanup is your enemy, it already defaults to this.

Recipes come back short: an ingredient list and numbered steps. No life story about a grandmother's villa in Tuscany.

Tips to get more out of it

Tell it your protein target. If you're training with Liftaroo and have a daily protein number (or your coach set one), give it to the assistant during setup. Every meal suggestion will quietly work toward that number.

Update it when life changes. Bought an Instant Pot? Cutting instead of bulking? Open the project settings and edit the instructions, or just tell it in chat and ask it to update its own instructions block for you to re-paste.

Use it for grocery lists. Ask it to plan your week's dinners first, then say "give me the grocery list." One list, organized by section, nothing you won't use.

Cook once, eat twice. Tell it you want leftovers and it'll scale portions so tonight's dinner is also tomorrow's lunch. Cheapest meal prep there is.

Set yours up

The setup prompt is free and lives at liftaroo.app/claude. Copy it, paste it into Claude, tap through the questions, and you'll have a cooking assistant that knows your kitchen before your next meal. Pair it with the Liftaroo app to handle the training half of the equation.