Meal-Planner/docs/ORIENTATION.md

Meal Planner — Orientation

First stop for any agent resuming work. Read this, then docs/HANDOFF.md for the deep dive.

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What this project is

Self-hosted meal planning for one family of 4. Pulls weekly grocery prices from Lucky California (San Pablo, store 757) via the Swiftly JSON API, generates a 7-day meal plan, emails per-member approval links, builds a shopping list grouped by aisle. Replaces meal-kit subscriptions (Blue Apron / Sunbasket / etc.) which marked up ingredients ~3× and produced repetitive meals.

Constraint that drives the design: 3 of 4 members do not like mushrooms; family is calorie/budget conscious; no allergies. Must work for non-technical wife + 2 kids; technical owner self-hosts.

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Architecture (current)

email ─► SendGrid (R3-C, not yet wired) ──┐
web   ─► nginx :80/:443 ─► React/Vite ────┼─► FastAPI ──► PostgreSQL 15
                                          │      │
                                          │      └─► Swiftly JSON API
                                          │         (prod.swiftlyapi.net)
                                          │
                                          └─► /api/admin/scrape (BackgroundTasks)

• backend (FastAPI 0.109, SQLAlchemy 2.0, Alembic) — internal only, expose: 8000
• frontend (React 18 + TS + Vite + Tailwind) — internal only via nginx
• db (Postgres 15-alpine) — internal only
• nginx — sole external entry, ports 80/443

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Phase status (2026-05-05)

#	Phase	Status
1	Infra (Docker, FastAPI, React, nginx, Postgres)	Complete
2	DB & models (Alembic, Pydantic schemas, API endpoints)	Complete (real, verified)
3	Lucky California ingestion (Swiftly JSON API)	Complete — 17 categories, ~10k products live
4	Recipe engine (CRUD, search, tagging, never-suggest filter)	Not started
5	Meal planner orchestration (generate → email → vote → finalize)	Not started
6	SendGrid email integration (proposal/reminder/confirmation)	Stub only — app/services/email.py::SendGridEmailBackend raises NotImplementedError
7	Web UI core (Dashboard / Meal Detail / Pantry / Shopping List)	Complete (no auth UI yet)
8	Web UI feedback portal	Not started
9	Meal-planner generation algorithm	Not started — the core of the project
10	Image strategy (scraped + AI fallback)	Not started
11	Polish (variety analysis, budget tracking, APScheduler)	Not started

Verification gate (R1+R2 + R3-0): 31/31 pytest green; alembic upgrade→downgrade→upgrade clean; frontend npm run build clean; live scrape persists 9,960 grocery_item rows in 36 s; email approval round-trip (approve/deny/single-use) verified end-to-end.

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Auth model (R1-B+D, locked in)

• Bearer token ADMIN_TOKEN for every /api/admin/* route.
• Signed-cookie session (itsdangerous, key=SECRET_KEY) for all NON-GET routes on profile/pantry/recipes/meals/shopping-list. GET reads stay open inside the trusted network.
• /api/auth/login accepts {password} matching SESSION_PASSWORD. Sets the cookie.
• /api/meals/vote/{item_id}?token=… keeps its per-voter token flow; not session-gated.
• Bootstrap hatch: when no family_profile row exists, login signs the literal string "bootstrap" instead of a UUID. First-run convenience only — replace with a real setup gate before any non-trusted exposure.

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Database schema highlights

Core tables: family_profile, family_member, recipe, ingredient, meal_plan, meal_plan_item, meal_plan_vote, approval_token, home_pantry, feedback, grocery_item, scrape_log, email_log.

Conventions: UUID PKs everywhere, TIMESTAMPTZ, Postgres ENUMs (with values_callable=lambda obj: [e.value for e in obj] on every SQLEnum — name-mode silently breaks otherwise), ISO day-of-week (1=Mon).

Key relationships: family_profile→family_member; family_member→meal_plan_vote (per-voter); recipe.ingredients JSONB (no recipe-ingredient join table); grocery_item.(source, external_id) is the upsert key for scrape ingestion.

Migrations applied: 0001 initial, 0002 seed (idempotent via ON CONFLICT DO NOTHING), 0003 grocery_item.description, 0004 family_profile.calorie_target, 0005 grocery_item.external_id + source + composite index.

Full schema: docs/database-schema.md.

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Environment variables (verified)

# Database
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=...
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://mealplanner:${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}@db:5432/mealplanner

# Auth
SECRET_KEY=...                    # signs session cookies + approval tokens
ADMIN_TOKEN=...                   # bearer for /api/admin/*
SESSION_PASSWORD=...               # family-shared password for /api/auth/login

# Email
EMAIL_BACKEND=console              # 'console' (default) or 'sendgrid'
SENDGRID_API_KEY=...              # only when EMAIL_BACKEND=sendgrid (R3-C)

# Lucky / Swiftly
LUCKY_STORE_ID=757                 # Lucky California — San Pablo
SWIFTLY_API_BASE=https://prod.swiftlyapi.net
SWIFTLY_CATEGORIES_URL=https://luckysupermarkets.com/categories
SWIFTLY_BEARER_TOKEN=...           # Firebase anon JWT, expires hourly

# Other
LUCKY_CA_URL=https://luckysupermarkets.com
AI_IMAGE_ENABLED=false
LOG_LEVEL=INFO

.env.example carries a literal expiring bearer token — rotate before any real run. On expiry, the next scrape's ScrapeLog.error_message reads SWIFTLY_BEARER_TOKEN expired — request a fresh token from the user (capture from luckysupermarkets.com network tab on a /search/api/v1 request). Fix: capture a fresh Authorization: Bearer … from devtools, update env, restart backend, re-trigger.

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Verification commands

# Full local stack
docker compose --env-file .env.test up -d db backend
docker compose --env-file .env.test exec backend alembic upgrade head
docker compose --env-file .env.test exec -e TEST_DATABASE_URL=postgresql://mealplanner:${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}@db:5432/mealplanner backend pytest -q tests/

# Frontend
cd frontend && npm ci && npm run build

# CI: .github/workflows/ci.yml runs both jobs on push/PR.

A .env.test template lives in the repo root (gitignored) for local stack runs. Pytest uses TEST_DATABASE_URL; alembic uses DATABASE_URL.

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Conventions

• Python: Black + isort. TypeScript: Prettier + ESLint.
• Conventional commits (feat:, fix:, docs:, refactor:, test:).
• API paths: no trailing slash, no /list//planned suffixes.
• Tests: pytest; requires_postgres marker auto-skips locally without TEST_DATABASE_URL.
• Migrations: Alembic only. Never Base.metadata.create_all() at runtime.
• Background work: FastAPI BackgroundTasks (current). APScheduler with --workers 1 planned for Phase 11.

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Where to look

• docs/HANDOFF.md — comprehensive handoff for fresh agents (start here for non-trivial work).
• docs/SPEC.md — product spec.
• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — system design.
• docs/database-schema.md — full DDL reference.
• docs/implementation-plan.md — original phased plan.
• docs/RUNNING.md — local dev workflow.
• .agent/plan.md, .agent/context.md, .agent/phase-summaries/ — recovery decisions and per-phase summaries from the R1+R2+R3-0 work.
• Review/reviewconcensus.md — the adversarial review that drove the recovery.

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Last updated: 2026-05-05 — after R1+R2 stabilization + R3-0 Swiftly ingestion (commit 8e89f79).