[RFC] application/recipe - create and edit recipes for food and drink stores

[patrickbolle]

What type are you proposing?

application/recipe, with the actions create and edit.

A recipe is a set of ingredients and steps that a food or drink brand publishes on its
store, often with its own products linked to the ingredients. Many Shopify food and
drink brands use recipes as their main content: a hot sauce brand shows what to cook
with it, a coffee roaster shows how to brew it.

What do merchants ask Sidekick to do that needs it?

Real requests we see from merchants on Recipe Kit, a recipe app on the Shopify App Store
since 2020:

1. "Write a recipe for our new chili crisp and link the jar to the chili crisp ingredient."
2. "Turn this PDF from our recipe developer into a recipe on the store." (create with
   fields extracted by Sidekick)
3. "Change the servings on the banana bread recipe to 8 and add a gluten-free note." (edit)
4. "Make a holiday version of our hot cocoa recipe." (create from an existing recipe)
5. "Fix the typo in step 3 of the cold brew recipe." (edit)

Today Sidekick can find recipes through a data extension, but it has no action to hand
off to. Merchants have to leave Sidekick and do the work by hand.

What apps would register intents for it?

• Recipe card and recipe blog apps (Recipe Kit and others in the App Store's recipe category).
• Meal-kit and subscription-box apps that attach recipes to products or boxes.
• Content apps for food, drink and supplement brands that publish usage guides with
  ingredients and steps.

What fields does it need?

A sketch, aligned with schema.org/Recipe so apps can map to
the structured data they already output for search engines. No required fields.

{
  "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
  "$id": "https://extensions.shopifycdn.com/shopifycloud/schemas/v1/application/recipe.json",
  "title": "Recipe Schema",
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "id": { "type": "string", "description": "The recipe ID. Used for edit actions." },
    "title": { "type": "string" },
    "description": { "type": "string" },
    "ingredients": {
      "type": "array",
      "description": "One entry per ingredient line, for example \"2 cups oat milk\"",
      "items": {
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
          "text": { "type": "string" },
          "productId": { "type": "string", "description": "Optional Shopify product GID linked to this ingredient" }
        }
      }
    },
    "instructions": { "type": "array", "description": "One entry per step", "items": { "type": "string" } },
    "servings": { "type": "string", "description": "For example \"4\" or \"12 cookies\"" },
    "prepTime": { "type": "string", "description": "ISO 8601 duration, for example PT15M" },
    "cookTime": { "type": "string", "description": "ISO 8601 duration" },
    "image": { "type": "string", "format": "uri" },
    "category": { "type": "string", "description": "For example Dessert" },
    "cuisine": { "type": "string" },
    "tags": { "type": "array", "items": { "type": "string" } },
    "sourceUrl": { "type": "string", "format": "uri", "description": "Where the recipe came from, if imported" }
  },
  "additionalProperties": true
}

productId on an ingredient is what makes a recipe shoppable, so we think it belongs in
the shared shape rather than in app-specific extra fields.

Anything close in the existing list?

• application/storefront-page (open RFC [RFC] application/storefront-page — create and edit storefront pages for page builder apps #29) builds whole pages. A recipe is structured
  content with ingredients, steps and product links, which a page type would flatten.
• application/faq is question-and-answer content with no steps or ingredients.
• Blog articles are where many apps place recipes, but there is no shopify/article intent,
  and a recipe is not an article: apps render it as a structured card with its own data.

Open questions

1. Delete. Merchants also ask Sidekick to remove recipes ("delete the test recipes").
   Is a delete action (or archive) planned for application/* types? If yes, recipes
   would use it.
2. App settings. Merchants ask to change how recipes look ("use the compact card",
   "turn on cook mode"). Is there a planned way for an app to accept a settings change
   from Sidekick with merchant confirmation, or is that out of scope for intents?
3. Bulk create. Imports are often many recipes at once (a whole PDF cookbook). Would
   create+bulk fit application/* types the way import+bulk fits shopify/* types?

We are glad to open the types/application-recipe.md PR once the shape is agreed.