Meal plans

There are three layers in MacroDeck for putting food in front of a client:

1. Meal templates — small, reusable building blocks (one slot of one meal). The library; you build these once.
2. Meal plans — full multi‑day, multi‑slot plans that combine templates into something a client follows.
3. Assignments — a meal plan attached to a specific client for a date range.

This page walks you through all three.

1. Meal templates — the library

Open Meal Templates from the sidebar. This is the catalogue of pre‑built meals that everything downstream draws from — both manual plans and the AI generator.

Each template is tagged with the slot it belongs in (Early Morning / Breakfast / Mid Morning / Lunch / Evening Snack / Dinner) and one or more diet tags like Diabetes OK, Vegetarian, Vegan. Macros (kcal · P · C · F) sit on the right of every row.

Search the top bar by name; filter by Slot or Diet using the chips next to the search.

Anatomy of a template

Click into any template to see and edit it.

Template details (top)

• Name — what the client sees.
• Slots — which meal slots this template can fill. A template can serve more than one (e.g. Breakfast and Mid Morning).
• Component roles — what kind of components this template needs (Grain, Dal, Sabzi, Protein, Snack, Drink, Salad). Optional, but the AI uses these to swap components in/out.
• Diabetes compatibility — explicit safe / not‑safe flag, separate from the diet tags below.
• Vegetarian / Vegan / Jain / Has egg — diet flags. These propagate to client filtering.
• Clinical notes — anything you want flagged (digestion, bloating, energy, etc).

Components (middle)

The actual foods that make up this template. Each component has a Min · Default · Max servings range:

• Default is what gets used when the template is dropped into a plan unchanged.
• Min/Max is what the AI is allowed to scale to when hitting macro targets.

Click + Add food to attach more foods. Foods are composed dishes — the row underneath shows the macros per serving.

Computed nutrition (bottom)

Live total macros for the template, summed from default servings. Updates as you add or remove components.

Creating a new template

Click New template on the Meal Templates page (top right). Fill in name + slots + components, save, and it's instantly available to plans and the AI generator.

2. Building a meal plan from templates

Open Meal Plans in the sidebar.

A meal plan is a grid: rows are slots (Early Morning → Dinner), columns are days (Day 1 → Day 7 typically, but you can have any number). Each cell is filled by a meal template.

Use New plan to start one. The builder is a day‑column grid: drop templates from the searchable side panel into the cells you want. Macros at the bottom of each column tally as you build, so you can balance the day live.

When you save, the plan moves to the Meal Plans list. From here you can clone it as a starting point, edit, or assign it to a client.

3. Generating a plan with AI

The fastest path: skip the manual builder and let the AI compose a plan that respects the client's conditions, allergies, taste profile, and macro targets.

Open the client, go to the Meal Plan tab, click New session.

The AI session uses everything you've already captured on the client:

• Conditions — diabetes, PCOD, hypertension, etc, are matched against template Diabetes compatibility and clinical notes.
• Allergies — foods are excluded if they contain an allergen the client has flagged.
• Recipe pool — the 250 (or however many) foods that survive the medical/taste filter for this client. Visible as the "Recipe pool · N foods" badge on this tab.
• Daily targets — kcal / P / C / F derived from goal + activity + body comp.
• Component caps — per‑slot kcal limits and serving min/max from each template.

The session opens an interactive chat designer. You can:

• Regenerate any individual cell.
• Swap a template for another that fits the same slot.
• Adjust the macro targets and have the plan recompose.
• Apply portion scaling — the engine resizes default servings (within Min/Max) to hit the day's target.

When you're happy, save the session. It shows under Meal Plans on the client's Meal Plan tab.

4. Assigning a plan

A plan that exists isn't yet a plan the client follows. Two ways to assign:

Assign a saved template plan On the client's Meal Plan tab, click Assign Plan (top right of Assigned Plans). Pick a meal plan, set a start date and duration, save. The client now sees it in their portal under My Meal Plan.

Assign an AI session After saving an AI session, the same Meal Plan tab gives you a one‑click assign. Same date range picker, same client portal experience.

Common workflows

"I need a 7‑day plan for a new diabetic client"

1. Make sure the client's Medical tab has Diabetes under conditions.
2. Open their Meal Plan tab → New session.
3. Let it generate. Review each day; regenerate any cell you want to swap.
4. Save → Assign with start = today, duration = 7 days.

"I want a vegetarian Indian breakfast template"

1. Meal Templates → New template.
2. Slot = Breakfast. Diet flags = Vegetarian.
3. Add components: e.g. Aloo Paratha (Default 1, Min 0.5, Max 1.5), Curd (Default 100g), Mango Pickle (Default 0.2 servings).
4. Save. The AI now has it in the pool for any vegetarian client at breakfast.

"I want to clone an existing plan and tweak it"

From Meal Plans, hit the menu on any saved plan → Duplicate. Edit the clone freely; the original stays untouched.

What's next

You now have everything you need to onboard, profile, and feed a client. From here:

• The client portal — clients see their assigned plan, log meals against it, and track progress. Walk a client through it once at their first session.
• Messaging — built into the staff and client portals, threaded by client.
• Appointments — book follow‑ups directly from the client's profile.

These are linked from the dashboard and sidebar. Same shape as everything else: list view, detail view, edit dialog.