The latest articles on DEV Community by Ed Ak (@lupitaapp). https://dev.to/lupitaapp https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4213835%2Ffafd2512-01c4-48a8-989f-009822b1a882.png https://dev.to/lupitaapp en Ed Ak Wed, 28 Oct 2026 20:28:47 +0000 https://dev.to/lupitaapp/how-i-built-a-recipe-extractor-for-tiktok-and-youtube-and-got-it-on-the-app-store-1op1 https://dev.to/lupitaapp/how-i-built-a-recipe-extractor-for-tiktok-and-youtube-and-got-it-on-the-app-store-1op1 <p>I spent months manually saving recipes from cooking videos. Pause, screenshot, type ingredients. Repeat. It was painful.</p> <p>So I built <strong>Lupita</strong> — an iOS app that does this automatically.</p> <h2> How it works </h2> <p>You paste any TikTok, Instagram Reel or YouTube cooking video link. Lupita:</p> <ol> <li>Downloads the audio from the video</li> <li>Transcribes it with AI</li> <li>Extracts ingredients with exact gram measurements</li> <li>Scales to your serving size</li> </ol> <p>The result is a clean, structured recipe saved offline to your phone.</p> <h2> The tech stack </h2> <ul> <li> <strong>Swift / SwiftUI</strong> — native iOS app</li> <li> <strong>Node.js backend</strong> — on a shared cPanel server</li> <li> <strong>yt-dlp</strong> — video audio extraction</li> <li> <strong>OpenAI Whisper</strong> — transcription</li> <li> <strong>GPT-4o-mini</strong> — ingredient parsing and gram conversion</li> </ul> <p>The trickiest part was handling the huge variety of video styles — some recipes are in metric, some imperial, some just say "a handful" or "to taste." The AI handles this reasonably well now.</p> <h2> Lessons from the App Store review </h2> <p>It took 4 submissions before Apple approved it. The main issues:</p> <ul> <li>Privacy policy had to be accessible without login</li> <li>The paywall copy couldn't say "free trial" if there was no trial</li> <li>EULA had to be shown before purchase, not after</li> </ul> <h2> What's next </h2> <p>The app has 5 free imports on install. Paid plans start at $2.99/month.</p> <p>If you cook and watch food videos, give it a try: <a href="https://lupita-app.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">lupita-app.com</a></p> <p>Also on the App Store: <a href="https://apps.apple.com/app/lupita/id6744403910" rel="noopener noreferrer">Lupita — Recipe from Any Video</a></p> <p>Curious if anyone else has built similar tools — what did you use for the AI parsing step?</p> ai ios mobile swift