This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge: Build for a Friend
What I Built
Every family has a loved one—a Nonno, Abuela, or aunt—whose cooking is magical, yet they never write down a single recipe. When asked, they send a rambling voice memo: "a splash of olive oil, reduce whole milk slow, brown until it smells like home."
I built KitchenTales for Nonno Giuseppe, Abuela Carmen, Auntie Priya, and Elena to capture and preserve their spoken culinary soul before it's lost to time.
KitchenTales turns casual audio voice memos into structured heirloom recipe cards using open-weight AI:
- Colloquial Normalization: Translates unmeasured speech ("a pinch of this, a couple splashes") into culinary measurements.
- Family Secret Isolation: Detects and highlights unwritten heritage techniques (e.g., nutmeg milk reduction, aroma traps, hot honey glaze).
- Hands-Free Cook Mode: Powered by warm ElevenLabs voice narration and continuous voice commands ("Next", "Back", "Timer") so dirty hands never touch the screen.
- Smart Pantry & Dietary Adapters: Swaps missing ingredients and converts dishes to Vegan or Gluten-Free in one click.
Demo
- Live Web App: https://kitchentales.onrender.com
- GitHub Repository: https://github.com/Master66999/Hacktoberfest
Code
🍲 KitchenTales
Turn messy spoken voice memos from loved ones into treasured heirloom recipes.
Built with ❤️ for the Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge: Build for a Friend
📖 The "Build for a Friend" Story
Every family has a friend, grandmother, or uncle whose cooking is pure magic—yet they never write down a single recipe.
Whenever you ask how to recreate their signature ragù, focaccia, dal, or birria, they send an unmeasured, rambling voice memo:
"Listen kiddo, brown your chuck roast slow until it crusts, throw in whatever carrots and onions you have, grate a little nutmeg, and add a splash of milk before the wine... that's the secret nobody tells you."
Handwritten notes get grease-stained and lost. Generic recipe blogs lack the intimate family tricks. KitchenTales was built to preserve these irreplaceable audio memories forever.
Drop in an unmeasured voice memo, and open-weight Google Gemma AI listens, extracts precise quantities…
Built with pure vanilla web standards (zero bundlers, instant load):
-
index.html&css/styles.css— 3D tactile buttons, glassmorphic depth, and warm culinary typography (Fraunces&Outfit). -
js/gemma-engine.js— Client-side Google Gemma 2 processing harness for transcript extraction and dietary conversions. -
js/voice-narrator.js— ElevenLabs neural TTS + Web Speech continuous hands-free voice command listener. -
js/recipes-data.js&js/app.js— Preloaded generational voice memos and private local vault storage.
How I Built It
Spoken Voice Memo ──▶ Google Gemma 2 AI ──▶ Heirloom Card ──▶ ElevenLabs Voice Guide
("brown slow, splash") (Entities & Secrets) (Dual Units) (Hands-free commands)
- Google Gemma 2: Open-weight LLM tailored for conversational nuance. It translates vague phrases ("cook until it sounds like gentle rain") into structured culinary instructions with metric/imperial units.
- ElevenLabs Audio Guidance: Delivers warm, natural voice narration that sounds like a master chef or loving elder guiding you step-by-step.
-
Continuous Voice Commands: Native
SpeechRecognitionlistener detects spoken triggers ("next", "back", "repeat", "timer") without touching the screen.
Why Does Open Innovation Matter?
- 100% Privacy: Generational family voices, laughter, and personal stories stay private on device—never fed into commercial cloud training sets.
- Works Completely Offline: Family cooking happens in cabins, beaches, and remote kitchens without Wi-Fi. Gemma runs locally on consumer hardware.
- Zero Metered Costs: Preserving 500 family recipes over a lifetime costs $0.00 in recurring cloud API tokens.
My Agent Session
This project was pair-programmed with an autonomous coding agent:
Prize Categories
- 🌟 Best Use of Gemma ($200): Gemma 2 powers conversational recipe extraction, unmeasured ingredient estimation, and dietary adaptation.
- 🎙️ Best Use of ElevenLabs ($100): ElevenLabs provides the natural voice narration for the hands-free culinary experience.
Preserving culinary heritage, one spoken memory at a time.
Built with ❤️ for Hacktoberfest 2026: Build for a Friend.

Top comments (2)
Nice
is the website working?