"A recipe tells you what someone else cooked once. A skill teaches you to cook forever." — The Kitchen Architect
Brought to you by Maehdakvan
July 25, 2026
Most cooking AI gives you a recipe and wishes you luck. This library gives your agent an actual culinary education: the mechanisms, the ratios, the failure tables, the doneness cues, the honesty about what a home stove can and cannot do.
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Every skill here was built on three non-negotiable principles:
- Mechanism over mimicry. Every instruction explains WHY (Maillard needs a dry surface, glutamate + inosinate multiplies umami 8x, starch water emulsifies fat). An agent that knows why can fix anything; an agent that only copies steps can only fail politely.
- Doneness by cues, never by blind timers. Real kitchens vary — a weak burner, a thin pan, a cold egg. Every recipe output leads with what to LOOK, HEAR, SMELL and FEEL for, with timers as backup only.
- Everyone can cook — including total beginners who "can't do anything". Skill-level calibration is baked into the default output contract. The same dish comes out as a zero-risk version for a first-timer and a flex version for a confident cook.
This is not a recipe collection. It is a complete kitchen brain: 8 world cuisines decoded as flavor grammars, a ruthless recipe auditor that fixes broken internet recipes, medical and goal-based diet adaptation, banquet math, kitchen economics, fermentation, pastry precision, and a training curriculum modeled on how real culinary schools and Bocuse d'Or teams actually train.
Cook boldly, taste constantly, and dream big!
| 🚀 Get Started | 🧭 Chef Router | 🧩 Domain Skills | 🤖 Agent Protocol | 📏 Kitchen Law |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Install | The Orchestrator | The Library | RRC Loop | Conventions |
Chef Agentic Skills is a high-density, Agent-First culinary knowledge library — an external "Long-Term Memory" for AI agents that cook, plan, teach, audit and adapt food. One of the largest and most tightly interwoven cooking knowledge bases available for agents: from "I have one weak burner and zero skills" to eight-course banquet production.
Unlike generic AI recipe responses, every skill in this repository is built on food science mechanisms, verified ratios, explicit failure-mode tables, and honest constraint adaptation — refined into a single interlocking system where safety and skill-level calibration are enforced by default, not offered as an afterthought.
If this project feeds you, your family, or your agents — please give it a star! 🌟
Choose your path to avoid a "Context Storm" (overloading your agent with 37 expert voices at once).
Install the router. It classifies any cooking task and pulls in ONLY the 2–5 skills that task actually needs.
npx skills add DedInc/chef-agentic-skills/skills/chef-routerNeed one specific capability (fix a bad recipe, cook a steak, plan a banquet)? Install just that Domain Skill.
npx skills add DedInc/chef-agentic-skills/skills/chef-recipe-optimizerWarning
NEVER install this repository with the --all flag. Loading 37 expert skills simultaneously creates a Context Storm: token bleed, conflicting expert instructions, and reasoning lag. The router exists precisely so this never has to happen — its hard law is maximum 5 skills per task.
The chef-router skill is the crown jewel of this repository: a dispatcher that reads the user's intent and assembles the minimal skill brigade for the job — so your agent never wanders through 37 skills to fry an egg.
flowchart LR
START([Cooking Task]) --> VERB{Classify by verb}
VERB -->|MAKE| M[cuisine or dish skill + technique]
VERB -->|FIX| F[recipe-optimizer + flavor-balance]
VERB -->|JUDGE| J[culinary-inspector]
VERB -->|PLAN| P[menu-event + economics + pairing]
VERB -->|LEARN| L[training-progression]
VERB -->|ADAPT| A[diet-* + ingredient-localizer]
VERB -->|PRESERVE| PR[fermentation-preservation]
M --> LAW[Always-on: constraints-adaptation + food-safety]
F --> LAW
J --> LAW
P --> LAW
L --> LAW
A --> LAW
PR --> LAW
| Task | Skill chain (and nothing else) |
|---|---|
| "This internet recipe seems off" | chef-recipe-optimizer → chef-flavor-balance |
| "Plov on one burner in a dorm" | chef-cuisine-silkroad (constraints layer already styles it) |
| "Dinner party for 10, one oven" | chef-menu-event-planning → chef-beverage-pairing → chef-kitchen-economics |
| "My sauce broke / too salty" | chef-flavor-balance live-repair tables |
| "Teach me to actually cook" | chef-training-progression (Levels 0–5 curriculum) |
| "Carbonara but lactose-free for a diabetic" | chef-world-classics → diet-restrictions-allergens → diet-medical-adaptation |
| "Can't find miso / masa / guanciale here" | chef-ingredient-localizer (declared-trade substitution) |
| "Grade my dish like Michelin would" | chef-culinary-inspector |
The Router's laws: maximum 5 skills per chain • cuisine skill beats ingredient guide for cuisine-specific dishes • chef-world-classics wins for named icons (pizza, ramen, carbonara) • always-on layers are style contracts, not loaded documents.
Two skills are default output contracts — every recipe or plan from any skill obeys them automatically:
| Layer | What it enforces |
|---|---|
chef-constraints-adaptation |
Doneness by CUES (look/hear/smell/touch) with timers as backup only • equipment reality (one burner, weak stove, no oven, tiny kitchen) • skill-level calibration from "total beginner who can't do anything" to confident cook • cliff-edge steps explicitly marked |
chef-food-safety |
Internal temperatures in °C • cross-contamination walls • allergen protocol • danger-zone clock • storage tables |
This is how "everyone can cook" stops being a slogan: the beginner version of every dish trades technique risk for time, never flavor for safety.
🧠 Core Engine (4 skills)
- chef-recipe-developer: The composer — builds complete recipes from any brief (craving, pantry, occasion) with salt-by-mass, structure, and the default layers wired in
- chef-recipe-optimizer: The ruthless auditor — dissects broken internet recipes, finds missing steps, wrong ratios, lying timers, and rewrites them to work
- chef-flavor-balance: The seven levers (salt, acid, fat, sweet, bitter, umami, heat) with live-repair tables for dishes going wrong mid-cook
- chef-culinary-inspector: Triple-lens inspection — Michelin-style dish grading, health-inspector kitchen walkthrough, workflow efficiency audit — with max 3 prioritized fixes and re-inspection loops
🥩 Ingredient Guides (6 skills)
- chef-meat-guide: Cuts, doneness by °C and touch, resting law, budget-to-premium mapping, low-and-slow science
- chef-seafood-guide: Freshness forensics, lean vs fatty protocols, the carryover rule, shellfish discipline
- chef-vegetable-guide: Vegetable-specific heat strategies, Maillard vs steam decisions, texture preservation
- chef-grains-legumes-guide: Ratios and absorption science for every grain, legume soaking truth tables, pilaf physics
- chef-spice-guide: Flavor compound families, blooming science, layering timing, regional blend architecture
- chef-ingredient-localizer: Function-first substitution protocol — decode the ingredient's role, rank local paths, declare the trade honestly (bazaar/CIS decoder included)
🔥 Craft & Science (7 skills)
- chef-technique-guide: Heat transfer mastery — sear, sauté, roast, braise, fry — with pan physics and cue-first protocols
- chef-gentle-methods-guide: The 60–100°C water ladder — steaming, poaching, boiling as precision luxury, not boring fallback
- chef-sauces-guide: Mother sauces to pan sauces — emulsion science, reduction discipline, rescue tables
- chef-baking-doughs-guide: Bread and dough fundamentals — hydration math, gluten development, fermentation schedules
- chef-pastry-confectionery: Pastry precision — creams, chocolate tempering curves, sugar stages, lamination
- chef-fermentation-preservation: Safe fermentation, pickling, curing and preserving with salt-percentage law and spoilage-vs-ferment forensics
- chef-equipment-gastrophysics: Every appliance as a heat profile — air fryer, multicooker, induction, cast iron — plus the physics to exploit them
🌍 World Cuisines (9 skills)
Each cuisine is decoded as a flavor grammar (not a recipe pile): core formulas, technique specs, a beginner ramp that adds one new mechanism per step, and localization notes.
- chef-cuisine-chinese: The Eight Great Traditions, wok hei on a weak home stove (batch law), velveting, master sauce formulas, red braising
- chef-cuisine-japanese: Umami synergy science (glutamate + inosinate = 8x), dashi protocol, the 8:1:1 / 4:1:1 / 1:1:1 master ratios, restraint as technique
- chef-cuisine-french: The operating system of Western cooking — five-beat pan grammar, braise pantheon, egg exams, bistro canon
- chef-cuisine-italian: Cucina povera laws, pasta-sauce marriage, starchy-water emulsions, risotto and mantecatura, regional map
- chef-cuisine-mexican: Nixtamalization chemistry with three honest home tiers, the dried-chili flavor library, salsa architecture, mole honesty ladder
- chef-cuisine-german: Schnitzel discipline, the potato canon, pretzel chemistry, sweet-sour-savory thesis, kraut cooked right
- chef-cuisine-silkroad: Middle East + Turkey + Central Asia — mezze system, mangal and kebab craft, the pilaf civilization, the dough belt (manty, samsa, gözleme), yogurt as mother sauce
- chef-cuisine-indian: Spice CHEMISTRY — fat-soluble flavor law, opening and finishing tadka, whole-vs-ground timing, the bhuna checkpoint, dal architecture
- chef-world-classics: The bridge skill — named-icon specs (pizza, sushi, ramen, carbonara, plov, tacos, shawarma…) with soul-vs-costume adaptation and benchmark standards
🍽️ Composition & Context (4 skills)
- chef-pantry-improviser: "I have these 7 things" → real dinner, via role-based ingredient thinking
- chef-beverage-pairing: Wine, beer, tea and zero-proof pairing by structural matching, not snobbery
- chef-menu-event-planning: Banquet math, oven-conflict scheduling, make-ahead trees, service timelines
- chef-kids-sensory: Cooking for children and sensory-sensitive eaters — texture bridges, exposure ladders, no food fights
🩺 Diet & Nutrition (3 skills)
- diet-medical-adaptation: Medical diet adaptation including the Pevzner system (Table No. 5 and siblings) — flavor-preserving compliance
- diet-goal-nutrition: Fat loss and muscle gain that tastes like food, not punishment — protein math, satiety engineering
- diet-restrictions-allergens: Allergen-safe and restriction-safe cooking — substitution chains with declared trades, cross-contact protocol
📈 Economy & Mastery (4 skills)
- chef-kitchen-economics: Cost-per-portion math, batch strategy, price-per-nutrient tables, restaurant-grade costing at home
- chef-zero-waste: The scrap map — every peel, bone and stem routed to stock, oil, powder or pickle
- chef-training-progression: The home culinary school — Levels 0–5 curriculum, palate gym drills, cook-it-5-times deliberate practice, modeled on CIA/Escoffier ladders and Bocuse d'Or rehearsal methodology
- chef-router: The head chef (see above)
AI agents must follow the RRC loop for maximum quality:
Read skills/chef-router/SKILL.md first. Classify the task by verb (MAKE / FIX / JUDGE / PLAN / LEARN / ADAPT / PRESERVE) and select the minimal chain — never more than 5 skills.
CRITICAL: Agents MUST NOT cook from general training data alone. Read each selected skill's SKILL.md (and its references/ tables when the task needs exact numbers) to catch the non-obvious deltas — the 60–65°C kombu window, the bhuna oil-separation checkpoint, the 10 g/L pasta-water salt law.
Produce output under the always-on contract: cues before timers, skill-level calibrated steps, safety temperatures inline, declared trades on every substitution, and a "how you'll know it worked" benchmark at the end.
Example workflow:
User: "Fix this soggy internet schnitzel recipe for my tiny induction hob"
Agent: Read chef-router → verb = FIX, cuisine = German
Agent: Chain = chef-recipe-optimizer + chef-cuisine-german (constraints + safety implied)
Agent: Audit recipe → find the lies (crowded pan, no swimming fat, wrong crumb)
Agent: Rewrite with cues, °C, batch law for induction, beginner-calibrated steps
Knowledge MUST stay mechanism-true. If a ratio, temperature or safety threshold in any SKILL.md is found wrong, fix it at the source immediately — never patch it in output only.
Every skill in the library speaks the same language:
- Metric everywhere, °C for all internal temperatures
- Salt ≈ 1–1.2% of mass as the default seasoning baseline
- Cue → verification → time-range, in that order, always
- Benchmarks close every dish spec — "you nailed it if…"
- Declared trades — every substitution says what is gained and lost
- Beginner ramps — one new mechanism per step, zero-risk entry version for every flagship dish
- Cross-references over duplication — cuisines link into technique/sauce/spice skills instead of restating them
Either use chef-router (which orchestrates the other 36 skills via references) OR install individual Domain Skills.
- chef-router is the orchestrator: dense but complete — use it when tasks vary
- Domain Skills are surgical: fast, focused, self-contained — use them for one recurring job
- Never both en masse: 37 simultaneous experts = metadata flood, instruction conflicts, reasoning lag
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Total Skills | 37 |
| World Cuisine Grammars | 8 (+1 bridge) |
| Reference Documents | 24 |
| Markdown Files | 62 |
| Words of Culinary Knowledge | ~45,000 |
| Always-On Safety/Adaptation Layers | 2 |
| Max Skills per Task (Router Law) | 5 |
| License | MIT |
We welcome contributions from cooks, scientists and agents!
Quick Guidelines:
- Every skill must provide an Expert Knowledge Delta — mechanisms and numbers, not tutorials
- Include failure modes with non-obvious explanations (why the sauce broke, not just "don't break it")
- Follow the Kitchen Law: metric, °C, cue-first, declared trades, beginner ramp
- New cuisines must be flavor grammars with localization notes, not recipe piles
Submit: Open an issue with a [Request] tag or a PR describing the knowledge delta your skill adds.
This project is licensed under the MIT License — see LICENSE for details.
Cook with it, ship products with it, feed people with it. Just keep the knowledge honest.
Authored by Maehdakvan • Maintained by the Agents
[!IMPORTANT] Anti-Erosion Policy: Ratios, temperatures and safety thresholds MUST remain mechanism-true. If reality disagrees with a SKILL.md, reality wins — update the skill.