Yummly shut down December 20, 2024

Yummly learned your taste and made the list. Agent Chef does that with your own assistant, and lets the house vote.

Yummly's taste profile, aisle-sorted shopping list and guided cooking are gone, and there was no export. Agent Chef rebuilds the same loop around the AI assistant you already have, with real recipes from the whole web and a weekly household vote.

Start freeHow it works
Dec 20, 2024Whirlpool discontinued Yummly, seven months after laying off the whole team. Twenty million users lost their saved recipes.
No exportRecipes could only be saved one at a time before shutdown. Everyone starts over, whichever app they pick.
Taste profileYummly's best feature learned what you saved and skipped. Agent Chef learns from how your household actually voted and rated.
ClaudeCursor

Your agent

Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor… checks in once or twice a day, asks Agent Chef what's due, writes the recipes, sends the messages, fills the cart.

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Agent Chef

Remembers everything: preferences, pantry, ballots, votes, feedback, ratings, orders. Decides what happens next. Serves the vote pages.

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Your household

Each person gets a personal link. No app, no account: tap, vote for five, add a comment, rate last week's dinner.

A taste profile that comes from real votes

Yummly inferred your taste from browsing. Agent Chef's signal is what your household chose and how dinner was rated, which your assistant reads before proposing the next ballot.

Real recipes, real photos, any site

Paste a recipe URL and it's saved with ingredients, steps and the source photo. Your assistant can pull from any recipe site rather than one publisher's library.

Built for a household, not a feed

Yummly was one person scrolling. Ten options go out, everyone votes from their phone, the top three win. Nobody has to be the decider.

Yummly and Agent Chef, side by side

YummlyAgent Chef
Recipe discovery✓ Yummly's library, personalized feed✓ your assistant proposes ten real recipes a week
Learns your taste✓ from browsing behavior✓ from household votes and post-dinner ratings
One grocery list✓ sorted by aisle, Instacart link✓ one list, minus what's in your pantry
Dietary preferences✓ filters and allergens✓ written in plain English, as specific as you like
Guided cooking✓ step mode with timers✓ step-by-step cook mode
Works with any storeInstacart only✓ any store; your assistant can fill the cart, you approve
Household voting–✓ personal links, no accounts
Save recipes from any URL✓ browser extension✓ paste a URL or ask your assistant
PriceFree (was); service discontinuedFree to start, then $5/mo or $40/yr per household, plus your groceries

Sources: Whirlpool's shutdown notice (November 2024) and coverage of the April 2024 layoffs; MealThinker and Plan to Eat write-ups of the shutdown. Last checked 2026-09-08. Corrections welcome at support@agentchef.net.

The ballot page with ten recipe cards
The weekly ballot: ten real recipes with photos. Everyone picks five.
Dashboard after voting closed, with three winners highlighted
Voting closes, the top three win, the list is built minus the pantry.

Switching from Yummly in five minutes

  1. Create your household. Sign in with email, Google or GitHub. Add the people who eat with you; each gets a personal vote link by text or email.
  2. Write your preferences the way you'd tell a friend. "Two adults, two kids under ten, no shellfish, one vegetarian night, weeknights under 40 minutes."
  3. Connect your assistant. Paste one sentence into Claude or ChatGPT: Add https://agentchef.net/mcp as an MCP server, then run Agent Chef. Click Allow once.
  4. Bring your favorites. Paste this into your assistant. If it can browse (Claude with the Chrome extension, ChatGPT agent mode, Codex), it opens your old account, you sign in, and it collects and saves the recipes itself. If it can't browse, it asks you for the names.
    I'm moving our old Yummly favorites into Agent Chef. Yummly is gone, so there's nothing to open; the dishes we loved are listed below from memory (if I've shared screenshots or old emails, use those too).
For each one, find a real recipe page on a well-known recipe site that matches what we mean, then import them all with import_recipes marked as favorites. If a page won't import but you can read it, save it with create_recipe. If you can't find a good match, tell me rather than guessing.
When you're done, list what you saved and what you skipped.

Dishes:
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  5. Say "Run Agent Chef." The first ballot goes out. From then on your assistant runs the week on a schedule.

Questions from Yummly users

Can I get my Yummly recipes back?

Not from Yummly; the service and its data are gone. If you remember the dishes, tell your assistant the names and it finds a real recipe for each, saves it and marks it as a favorite so it shows up on future ballots.

Did Yummly have a household vote?

No. Yummly was a personal recipe feed and planner. Agent Chef sends every household member a personal link to vote and comment, and the top three win.

Do I need ChatGPT or Claude?

You need an AI assistant that can connect to an MCP server: Claude (claude.ai, Desktop, Code), ChatGPT or Codex, Cursor, and others. Agent Chef has no AI inside; your assistant proposes the recipes and Agent Chef runs the vote, the pantry and the list.

Is there a phone app?

Agent Chef is a website that works on any phone. Household members vote from a personal link with no app and no account. The owner signs in on the web; add it to your home screen for an icon.

Ready when you are.

Free during early access. Nothing to import, so switching takes an evening.

Start free

Other comparisons: Blue Apron & Marley Spoon · HelloFresh · Mealime

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