DEV Community: Valerii Torianyk

AI that plans your meals so you do not have to

Valerii Torianyk — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 16:02:15 +0000

I believe the most useful everyday AI will quietly remove dozens of tiny decisions. Food is the biggest one. Not finding recipes, but deciding what to cook, making it fit your diet and time, and turning it into a plan you can follow.

That is why I built PlanEat AI

an AI weekly meal planner that creates a full menu around your diet, allergies, dislikes, meals per day, and cooking time. You get a realistic week plus one smart shopping list. Swap a dish and the plan, recipes, and list update instantly. No calorie counting. The goal is simple, consistent healthy eating without decision fatigue.

Why food is a perfect case for everyday AI

High frequency decisions every day
Personal constraints like diets, allergies, time budgets
Tangible outcomes like adherence, faster shopping, less waste

Most tools excel at inspiration or tracking. The future is orchestration: an assistant that respects constraints, plans the whole week in minutes, and stays flexible when life changes at 6 pm.

What automation looks like

Set preferences once: diet, allergies, dislikes, meals per day, cooking time
Receive a weekly plan with clear instructions and prep friendly ideas
Use a single consolidated shopping list that groups items and quantities
Change your mind anytime and the assistant recalculates instantly

Next step
Cooking is cultural and physical. Long term I want to replace AI generated recipes with short video recipes from local cooks. A Japanese cook teaches Japanese dishes, an Italian teaches Italian. Videos tie to timers and captions, push ingredients into the shopping list, and offer regional substitutions.

If this resonates, I would love your thoughts on where meal planning AI should go next and what a trustworthy cooking companion looks like for you.

iOS download

I am Valerii Torianyk, founder of PlanEat AI and CEO at Valtorian, a startup partner that helps domain experts validate ideas, build focused MVPs, and reach first traction.

Why I used emojis instead of icons in my app design

Valerii Torianyk — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 15:56:15 +0000

Hi everyone 👋

I’m Valerii, solo founder of PlanEat AI — an AI-powered meal planning app.

When designing the interface, I had two goals:

Make it emotional — I didn’t want just sterile icons, but something that makes people feel something.
Move fast — as a solo founder, I needed a quick way to prototype without spending weeks hunting for the “perfect” icons.

💡 My solution? Emojis.

Instead of searching for icon packs or hiring a designer, I simply leaned on emojis:
✅ Success states → playful emoji with a wink
🎉 Subscription → confetti emoji
🤔 Decision screens → thinking face
🔥 Activity level → flame emoji
🍽️ Eating style → plate & utensils

It turned out to be both fast and surprisingly effective:

Users instantly understood the meaning (no legend needed).

Emojis gave the app a human touch, making serious tasks like “reset password” or “track allergies” feel less heavy.

It also saved me hours of design time.

Of course, emojis have limits — they don’t scale perfectly, and consistency is tricky. But for an MVP, they helped me create a design that feels alive and friendly.

👉 Question for you: Have you ever used emojis (or other “non-standard” assets) in your UI to speed up design? Did it work, or did it backfire with users?

You can also see the full app here: planeatai.com

I built PlanEat AI - a weekly meal planner for real life

Valerii Torianyk — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 15:16:03 +0000

I run a small startup partner called Valtorian. Long days led to the same question every evening: what do I cook today? I tried the usual apps. Great recipes and calorie counters, but none planned a full week around time limits, allergies, and taste. So I built PlanEat AI.

What it does
Set diet, allergies, dislikes, meals per day, and cooking time. The app creates a realistic weekly menu plus one smart shopping list. Swap any dish and the plan, recipes, and list update instantly. iOS link: App Store

Tech stack at a glance
Flutter and Dart, Supabase Postgres with Edge Functions and RLS, a lightweight LLM layer for ranking, StoreKit 2 for subscriptions, aggressive offline-friendly caching.

What I learned from the first 60+ users

Time budget matters more than calorie math in week one
Instant swaps reduce anxiety and keep people in flow
Grouped shopping lists beat recipe-by-recipe lists every time

What is next
Next 60-90 days: distribution and traction to 1,000 active users. Channels: ASO, TikTok, Instagram Reels, targeted Reddit posts, Indie Hackers, DEV. Paid: creator sponsorships, Spark Ads on top clips, Apple Search Ads. Metrics: CAC, D1 and D7 retention. Later: swap AI recipes for short step-linked videos taught by local cooks, tied to timers and the shopping list.

Would love feedback on onboarding, menu quality for different time budgets, and shopping list grouping. If you try it and something hurts, tell me - I will fix it.