Guide

A family meal planner that remembers everyone

Most meal planners are built for one person with one set of tastes. A family is different: your youngest is allergic to tree nuts, your teen won't touch onions, one adult is trying to eat a little less at dinner, and Tuesday is soccer, so dinner has to take twenty minutes. Ulivo is a family dinner planner that keeps all of that in one place and plans the week around it, when you ask your AI assistant.

The problem with planning family dinners

The hard part of family dinners isn't cooking. It's re-solving the same puzzle every night with the same rules: who's allergic to what, who hates what, who's home, how much time there is, and what's already in the fridge. Spreadsheets and recipe apps don't remember those rules for you, so you keep them in your head and check every recipe by hand.

Ulivo flips that around. You describe your family once. After that, every dinner it suggests has already been checked against everyone's rules.

How Ulivo works

1. Set up your family once. Add each person on getulivo.com, or just tell your assistant: name, age group, allergies, foods they never eat, foods they'd rather skip, and how big their portion is. Adults can also have a dinner calorie target.
2. Tell it about your week. Which nights are busy, who's away, how many minutes you have to cook. For example, "Tuesdays are 20 minutes, dinner by 7" or "Alex is away Wednesday."
3. Ask for the plan. Say "plan our dinners this week." Ulivo picks a dinner for each night and explains why each one fits.
4. Shop. Ask for the shopping list. It's combined across the week, scaled to your family's portions, and grouped by aisle. In the US you can open it in Instacart if you'd rather have it delivered.

Here's what that sounds like in practice:

You: Plan our dinners for next week. Maya didn't like the cod last time, and Tuesday has to be quick.

Assistant: Here's your week. Tuesday is hake with lemon and garlic peas, about 20 minutes, so it's done before practice. No cod this week, and nothing with tree nuts or onions for Maya.

What Ulivo remembers about each person

• Allergies. Treated as strict rules based on ingredients. A dinner that contains one is never planned on a night when that person is eating. See allergy-friendly meal planning for how this works and what it can't know.
• Foods they never eat and diets. "No cheese", vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian, no pork, no beef, gluten-free or dairy-free are strict rules too.
• Dislikes. Softer than allergies: Ulivo avoids them where it can and prefers dinners fewer people dislike. Read more in meal planning for picky eaters.
• Portions. Every person has a portion size. Children under 13 start at a smaller portion than adults, and you can change anyone's. Quantities on the shopping list follow these portions.
• Schedules. Who's home each night and how long you have to cook. If someone's away, their portion comes off that night.
• What everyone thought. Tell your assistant "Alex loved the souvlaki" or "never make that again", and future weeks take it into account. Favorites come back every few weeks.

Small details that make weeknights easier

A few things that sound minor but save real time:

• Toppings on the side. If a recipe has an optional topping that's a food someone never eats, like feta on a salad for the person who never eats cheese, Ulivo tells you to leave it off their plate instead of ruling out the whole dinner. (Allergies are stricter: an allergen in any part of a recipe, toppings included, rules that dinner out.)
• Swaps with a reason. Ask to swap Friday for something else and Ulivo offers options that still fit everyone. If you ask for something that breaks a rule, it says why it can't, for example that a dinner has almonds and Maya is allergic to tree nuts.
• Eating out and leftovers. Mark Sunday as eating out and its ingredients leave the shopping list. You can also plan leftovers nights.
• Pantry. Say "we already have rice and olive oil" and they leave the list.
• A weekly grocery budget. Set one and the plan stays within its estimated cost. If your rules make that impossible, Ulivo says so.

The food

Every dinner in Ulivo's recipe library is Mediterranean-style: vegetables, beans and lentils, fish, whole grains and olive oil. Think lentil soup, chicken souvlaki bowls, baked cod with tomatoes and olives, or shakshuka. You can also save your own family recipes, and Ulivo plans with those too. You can browse the recipes.

Where you use it

Ulivo doesn't have its own planning app. You plan by chatting with an AI assistant you already use. Ulivo is built for Meta's Muse (launching soon) and also connects to ChatGPT and Claude. Your family's details, billing and privacy settings live on getulivo.com. See how to connect an assistant.