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Proposing recipe changes from chat

The Connector can do more than answer questions. It can also propose recipe changes that you review and apply in the Brikly web app. The AI assistant never touches your live recipes directly. Proposals land in the Recipe Drafts Inbox for your approval.

This is the chat-side companion to the inbox docs. Read both if you are setting this up for the first time.

When you would use it​

The pattern shines when you want the assistant to make a structured change across one or more recipes, and you do not want to type the change into the web app by hand.

Examples that work well:

  • "Swap dairy milk for oat milk on every drink that uses it. Use 10% more oat milk per drink to keep the body."
  • "Add a salted caramel variant of the Latte at the same price as the Vanilla Latte."
  • "Bump the brownie tray yield from 16 to 14 and update the per-slice cost."
  • "Replace caster sugar with golden caster sugar on every bake and update the supplier mapping to match what we actually buy."
  • "I want to add a pistachio cardamom bun." The assistant can propose the recipe even if you do not yet stock pistachio paste or ground cardamom, flagging both as pending sourcing for you to add at approval time.

The assistant works out the affected recipes, drafts the change for each one, and tells you what landed in the inbox. You review and approve in the web app.

What the assistant does behind the scenes​

When you ask for a recipe change, the assistant follows a deliberate flow:

  1. Resolve the affected recipes. "Every drink that uses dairy milk" becomes a concrete list, often using the reverse lookup tool first. The assistant should confirm the list with you before going further.
  2. Cost each proposed change. For each recipe, the assistant builds the target spec and calls costing_cost_recipe_spec to get the cost, margin, and £/margin pp delta against the live recipe. This catches "I forgot the consumable cup" or "I got the unit wrong" before anything reaches the inbox.
  3. Submit the draft. Once costs look right, the assistant calls costing_propose_recipe_draft, which creates a pending draft in your inbox. The response includes the same cost preview the inbox will show.
  4. Report back. The assistant tells you how many drafts landed, with the cost and margin deltas, and reminds you to review in the web app.

Steps 2 and 3 are required. The assistant is instructed to always cost a spec before proposing it. Unit conversions, consumables, sub-recipes, and VAT-correct margins are easy to get wrong by mental arithmetic, so the cost engine does the maths and the assistant quotes those numbers back to you.

The six MCP tools​

These tools are part of the costing.write scope. If you have already authorised the Connector for what-if scenarios, you have these too. If you have only granted read access, the assistant will tell you to re-authorise from the Brikly app's Connector page.

costing_cost_recipe_spec (read-only)​

Costs a hypothetical recipe spec without persisting anything. The assistant uses this to iterate on a proposal ("try 220 ml of milk, what is the margin? now try 240 ml") before committing it as a draft.

If you pass a parent_recipe_id, the response includes the delta vs the live recipe.

Pure helper, no side effects. Same scope as the other read tools.

costing_propose_recipe_draft (write)​

Submits a draft to your inbox. Supports three operations:

  • edit - change an existing recipe (most common).
  • create - propose a brand-new recipe.
  • duplicate - clone an existing recipe with edits (useful for seasonal variants).

Requires costing.write. Each draft has a short operator-facing summary and an optional rationale.

Ingredient lines on the proposed spec can be one of three shapes:

  • Existing ingredient - the normal case, referencing a tenant_ingredient_id from your pantry.
  • Sub-recipe - the line is itself another recipe (a "component"), referenced by source_recipe_id.
  • Pending ingredient - a name and a purchase unit, no ID. Use this when the operator describes an ingredient they do not yet stock. The assistant must never invent a price for a pending ingredient. Operator sources it (link or create) at approval time.

When a draft contains any pending ingredients, the cost preview's is_complete flag is false, proposed_cost_per_unit reflects only the costed lines, and margin fields are null. The assistant must quote partial cost as "X from costed lines so far" rather than as the final cost.

costing_update_recipe_draft (write)​

Iterative refinement of an existing pending draft. Lets the assistant adjust the spec, summary, or rationale of a draft it already filed, without changing the draft_id. The operator sees one item evolving in their inbox, not a graveyard of discarded variants.

Useful when the operator and the assistant are working through a new product idea over several messages. The first message files the draft with a rough first pass; later messages tweak quantities, swap pending ingredients, add or remove lines, or update the summary.

Structural identity is immutable: operation (edit / create / duplicate) and parent_recipe_id cannot change via update. If the operator wants to redirect the proposal at a different recipe, the assistant files a fresh draft via costing_propose_recipe_draft.

At least one of proposed_spec, summary, or rationale must be provided. A no-field call is rejected.

Only pending drafts can be updated. Approved, rejected, discarded, and superseded drafts are immutable.

Requires costing.write. Each update is captured in an audit history on the draft, capped at the most recent 50 entries.

costing_list_recipe_drafts (read-only)​

Lists pending drafts (or filters by status, operation). The assistant uses this to answer "what is in my inbox?" or to find a previous draft it proposed.

Returns slim rows: id, recipe name, summary, cost delta, margin delta, stale flag, needs-sourcing flag, status. The needs-sourcing flag lets the assistant tell the operator at a glance how many of their drafts still have pending ingredients.

costing_get_recipe_draft (read-only)​

Returns the full payload for a single draft: proposed spec, base snapshot, cost preview (including is_complete and missing_ingredients), stale flag, pending ingredients with their current resolution state, review state. The assistant calls this when you ask "what did you put in that draft?" or "what is the status of my pistachio bun draft?".

The assistant can read pending ingredient state across sessions but cannot resolve pending ingredients itself. Resolution is operator-only and happens in the web app inbox.

costing_discard_recipe_draft (write)​

Retracts a pending draft the assistant proposed by mistake. Only pending drafts can be discarded from chat - approved and rejected drafts are immutable once an operator has decided on them.

Members or higher can discard. Discarding a draft you proposed yourself is a benign action.

What the assistant cannot do​

The split between assistant and operator is deliberate:

  • Approve a draft. Only you can approve, and only from the web app's Recipe Drafts Inbox. If the assistant ever offers to "go ahead and apply that change", treat it as a hallucination.
  • Reject a draft. Same rule. Rejection is an operator action.
  • Push a what-if scenario live. Same separation as before - the assistant simulates, you push.
  • Edit a recipe directly. The MCP server has no costing_update_recipe tool. The only way to change a live recipe through chat is propose, review, approve.
  • Source a pending ingredient. The assistant can flag an ingredient as pending sourcing on a draft, but it cannot link or create the underlying ingredient. That happens in the inbox at approval time, with you choosing the supplier and price.
  • Quote a price for a pending ingredient. The assistant never invents an ingredient price. If it suggests "this paste typically runs around £18/kg" in agent notes, treat that as commentary, not data - the actual price you enter at create time is the only number Brikly trusts.

The 50 pending-draft cap​

Each tenant can have at most 50 pending drafts at any one time. If the assistant tries to propose a 51st while 50 are already pending, the propose tool returns an error and the assistant tells you to clear some from the inbox before continuing.

In practice, this matters when an assistant tries to roll out a sweeping change across hundreds of recipes in one go. Ask for a smaller scope, or review what is already pending before going wider.

Stale drafts and what to do​

If you change a live recipe after the assistant has proposed a draft against it, the draft may become stale. The web app inbox flags it. The assistant can also detect this on a subsequent costing_list_recipe_drafts or costing_get_recipe_draft call - the is_stale flag in the response tells the assistant the draft may need re-review or replacement.

The assistant should not propose around a stale draft on its own. Resolve it in the inbox first (re-review, edit-then-approve, or discard), then ask the assistant to propose afresh if needed.

Audit and tenancy​

  • Every propose, list, get, and discard call is logged with your user ID, the tenant ID, the draft ID, and the originating tool. You have a full audit trail.
  • Cross-tenant access is impossible. A draft ID from another operator's tenant collapses to not_found.
  • The assistant is told to surface impact and let you decide. If it proposes a specific price move or a big sweeping ingredient swap without you asking, push back and tell us - the prompt should not be steering you that way unprompted.

Example session​

A typical exchange looks like this:

You: Swap dairy milk for oat milk on every drink that uses it. Use 10% more oat milk per drink to keep the body.

Assistant: I found 8 drinks that use dairy milk: Latte, Cappuccino, Flat White, Cortado, Mocha, Hot Chocolate, Chai Latte, and Matcha Latte. For each, I will replace the current dairy quantity with 10% more oat milk. Before I submit, here is the projected margin impact per drink: [table with current cost, projected cost, margin delta]. Should I go ahead and propose these as drafts?

You: Yes, but skip the Matcha Latte. We are running out of oat for matcha.

Assistant: Done. 7 drafts are now in your inbox at /costing/drafts, each with the cost preview I quoted above. Approve them in the Brikly web app when you have a moment.

You then open the inbox, eyeball each draft, and approve or edit as needed. The assistant has done the structured work; you keep the final say.

Next steps​