alexpopov/notion-recipes

Cay's Notion Recipes

For working with Cayleigh's Notion workspace via the token-based notion-wife MCP. Pair with notion-rest-tricks for the underlying API patterns.

The Recipes database

| Field | Type | Notes | |---|---|---| | database_id | — | 9730ecb7-e605-4da8-989c-5e95edd423fa | | data_source_id | — | 8ed55d29-7075-4df6-afcf-f49acd9f72a3 | | URL | — | https://www.notion.so/9730ecb7e6054da8989c5e95edd423fa |

| Property | Type | Notes | |---|---|---| | Name | title | Recipe name | | Tags | multi_select | Cuisine, ingredients, meal type, cocktail spirits, etc. ~200 options. | | Status | select | To do, Done, Make Again | | Rating | number | Plain number (no star format) | | Link | url | Source URL | | Comments | rich_text | Short notes — body content goes in page children | | Recipe Cooked | checkbox | | | Related Recipes / Related back to Recipes | relation | Dual-property self-relation |

Body content is page block children (ingredients as bulleted_list_item, instructions as paragraphs or numbered lists). Set Comments only for short metadata; put the recipe itself in the body.

Tag conventions

Tags fall into rough buckets — pick liberally from existing tags. Common groupings observed:

• Course: Dessert, Dinner, Lunch, Snack, Side, Appetizer, Sandwich, Soup, Stew, Salad, Wrap
• Difficulty / time: Easy, Slow, Cold
• Cuisine: Korean, Japanese, Russian, Canadian, Swiss, Indian, Malaysian, Thai, Chinese, Mexican, Spanish, Caribbean
• Protein: Chicken, Beef, Pork, Fish, Tuna, Salmon, Crab, Shrimp, Tofu, Egg, Ground Meat, Sausage, Turkey, Steak, Bacon, Ham, Wings
• Veg / produce: Potatoe, Carrots, Beets, Cabbage, Cucumber, Spinach, Zucchini, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Tomato, Onion, Garlic, Avocado, Mushroom, Asparagus, Eggplant, Lettuce, Endive, Sprouts, Corn, Leek, Celery, Beans, Chickpea, Lentils, Edamame
• Dairy: Cheese, Feta, Brie, Cottage Cheese, Yogurt, Quark, Goat, Cream, Ricotta, Milk
• Cocktail: Cocktail, shaken, plus spirit/ingredient tags (Mezcal, tequila, Whiskey, Aperol, Campari, sweet/dry vermouth, Lillet/Cocchi, Chartreuse, St-Germain, Benedictine, Frangelico, Absinthe, Orange Liqueur, Angostura, Egg white, Donn's Mix #1, Death and Co, …)
• Other: Recipe, Resource, Basics, Christmas, Summer, BBQ, Baking, Marinade, Dressing, Sauce, Pesto

Be aware some tags have typos (Potatoe, Alochol, suace). Use them as-is — don't rename them; that risks losing the relation on existing recipes.

RULE: new tags require user permission

Do not create new tags without asking the user first. Assigning existing tags to recipes is fine.

• Why: New tags expand a shared ontology. Cay curates this; ad-hoc additions create duplicates ("Lime" vs "Limes"), typos, and ontology drift. The user wants final say on what gets added to the canonical list.
• How to apply: Before any multi_select write that includes an unknown option, pause and confirm with the user. If they approve, prefer recipes-helper.sh add-tag (which preserves the existing list — see "Common pitfall" in notion-rest-tricks).

If a tag almost matches an existing one (e.g. you want "Lime" and "Lime" already exists), use the existing one. Use recipes-helper.sh list-tags <substring> to check before assuming a tag is missing.

recipes-helper.sh

Lives at ~/.claude/skills/notion-recipes/recipes-helper.sh (symlinked from this dotfile). Hits the Notion REST API directly via curl + jq, much smaller responses than MCP for tag/recipe lookups.

Requires NOTION_TOKEN_WIFE in env. Commands:

recipes-helper.sh list-tags [substring]    # all tags, optionally filtered (case-insensitive)
recipes-helper.sh find-recipe <substring>  # search recipes by Name (returns id + title)
recipes-helper.sh show-recipe <page-id>    # print page body as plain text
recipes-helper.sh add-tag <name> [color]   # add new tag (USER PERMISSION REQUIRED FIRST)

add-tag performs a safe read-modify-write: fetches current options, appends the new one with the chosen color, and PATCHes the data source. This avoids the wipe-existing-tags trap when using update-data-source directly.

Color must be one of: default, gray, brown, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, red.

Workflow: adding a recipe

1. Search first — recipes-helper.sh find-recipe <name> to confirm it doesn't already exist.
2. Pick tags — start from the conventions above; use list-tags <substring> to verify spellings. If a needed tag is missing, stop and ask the user before adding.
3. Create the page via mcp__notion-wife__API-post-page with parent {type: "database_id", database_id: "9730ecb7-e605-4da8-989c-5e95edd423fa"}, an emoji icon, Name + Tags + (optionally Link, Status).
4. Append the body via mcp__notion-wife__API-patch-block-children — ingredients as bulleted_list_item, method as bullets or paragraphs, notes section at the end.
5. Return the URL so the user can review/edit.