MealPalBot - A meal planning assistant with RAG-based meal plan generation and grocery cart integration
A plug-in bot + web UI that generates retrieval-grounded meal plans using OpenAI + RAG and converts them into a checkout-ready grocery cart flow.
Overview
MealPalBot is a plugin-style assistant (a bot with an optional web UI) that orchestrates meal planning from preference + pantry inputs and turns the output into an actionable grocery ordering workflow.
The Problem
Meal planning isn't just choosing recipes , users still have to translate preferences, pantry context, and nutrition constraints into a concrete ingredient list and then manually build a cart/checkout flow. That last mile creates most of the friction and drop-off.
The Solution
Implemented a split-service architecture: Django MVC + DRF acts as the system of record for users, recipes/nutrition, pantry state, meal-plan objects, and OCR ingestion. A NestJS service handles OpenAI-based meal planning with a RAG layer over the Django-managed dataset and owns Kroger OAuth + cart integration to generate purchasable carts. Added Redis caching and geolocation-aware store selection surfaced in the Next.js UI to reduce latency and improve local relevance.
Results & Impact
Built an end-to-end pipeline from user inputs → retrieval-grounded meal plan → normalized ingredients → cart-ready items, with faster repeat responses via caching and improved usability through OCR-based ingredient capture.