I Built an AI Meal Planner That Saves Families $200/Month on Groceries

Every Sunday my family had the same conversation: "What should we cook this week?" 30 minutes of arguing later, we'd end up ordering takeout. Again. $60 gone. Again. I got tired of it, so I built MealAI — an AI-powered meal planner that generates a full week of meals in seconds and creates a smart grocery list you can order with one tap. Here's how I built it and what I learned. The Problem Meal planning is broken for most families: It takes 30-60 minutes every week to plan meals You forget ingredients and make multiple grocery trips You overspend because you buy without a plan Everyone in the family has different dietary needs I wanted something that could handle all of this in under 30 seconds. The Tech Stack Framework: Next.js (App Router) AI: Claude API (Anthropic) Database: Supabase (PostgreSQL + Auth) Payments: Stripe Hosting: Vercel Styling: Tailwind CSS Why These Choices? Next.js App Router — Server components for fast initial loads. API routes that scale to zero on Vercel. The