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Cooklang

A Recipe Markup Language

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Cooklang is a plain text markup format for recipes that can be read by both people and software. Recipes are stored locally as .cook files, work offline, and require no account, so users keep ownership of their content. The format supports ingredient and equipment tagging, quantities with units, and timers, and files can be version controlled with Git.

The ecosystem includes command-line tools (CookCLI) for parsing recipes, generating shopping lists and running a local server; mobile apps for iOS and Android with a sync agent; editor plugins for VS Code, Sublime, Vim and Emacs; a self-hosted web server; and Cook Editor, a free open-source desktop workspace with syntax highlighting, live preview, shopping lists, meal plans and the optional CookBot AI assistant. Additional capabilities include recipe scaling, menu planning, recipe dependencies, PDF and LaTeX cookbook generation, recipe import from websites and other apps, nutrition data, and an MCP server for AI tools.

Cooklang is aimed at cooks and developers who want portable, text-based recipe files. The language, parsers, CLI and Cook Editor are open source. Optional cloud services are packaged into subscription tiers: Cook Basic includes sync, while Cook Pro adds CookBot and advanced imports; a free plan covers the core offline tools.

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