Acara Plate - Personalized Nutrition AI Agent

🚀 Live Demo — Try Acara Plate now without installation

Acara Plate is an AI-powered personalized nutrition and meal planning platform that creates customized meal plans based on individual user data such as age, weight, height, dietary preferences, and health goals. The platform simplifies meal planning by providing users with tailored recipes, nutritional information, and glucose tracking capabilities that align with their unique needs and lifestyle.

Important

Disclaimer: Acara Plate is an AI-powered tool for informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. See the Medical Disclaimer below.

Table of Contents

• Acara Plate - Personalized Nutrition AI Agent

• Table of Contents

• Overview

• Product Capabilities

• Personalization Inputs

• Generated Outputs

• User Journey Highlights

• Getting Started

• Prerequisites

• Project Setup

• Environment Configuration

• Running the Development Server

• Testing & Code Quality

• Data Initialization

• Database Seeding

• USDA Food Database Import

• Deployment

• Self-Hosting Options

• Production Environment

• Future Enhancements

• Accessing Acara Plate

• Progressive Web App

• Contributing

• Code of Conduct

• License

• Medical Disclaimer

Overview

Acara Plate is a Laravel 12 application that pairs Inertia (React) with Tailwind CSS to deliver a seamless AI-assisted meal planning experience. Powered by PrismPHP, it generates seven-day meal plans that adapt to each user’s biometric data, preferences, and goals while tracking key wellness metrics such as glucose readings.

Product Capabilities

Personalization Inputs

• Biometrics: Age, sex, height, weight, BMI, BMR, and TDEE calculations
• Goals: Weight loss, muscle gain, maintenance, condition management, endurance, flexibility
• Lifestyle: Activity level, occupation, sleep patterns
• Preferences: Vegan, vegetarian, keto, paleo, gluten-free, lactose-free, allergen exclusions, dislikes
• Health Conditions: Diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and other nutrition-sensitive conditions

Generated Outputs

• Calorie targets aligned with goals
• Macronutrient distribution (protein, carbs, fat)
• Meal-by-meal recipes with quantities, portions, and prep guidance
• Nutritional information per meal and daily summaries
• Grocery list generation and macro visualizations (coming soon)
• Printable meal plans with semantic HTML for reading mode and PDF export
• Glucose tracking with analytics, trends, and time-in-range insights
• Automated glucose analysis notifications with actionable recommendations sent via email

User Journey Highlights

1. Onboarding Questionnaire: Collects biometric data, goals, lifestyle factors, dietary preferences, and health conditions.
2. AI Meal Planning: Uses PrismPHP-driven LLM workflows to build structured seven-day plans with queue-backed processing and progress tracking.
3. Meal Plan Management: Offers day-by-day navigation, macro bars, detailed meal cards, and generated shopping support.
4. Glucose Monitoring: Records readings, classifies context (fasting, pre-meal, post-meal, random), and surfaces analytics for recent periods. Automated email notifications analyze 7-day trends, identify patterns and concerns, and provide actionable insights for meal plan adjustments.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

This application is built with:

• PHP 8.4
• Composer 2 — PHP dependency manager
• Node.js 20+
• Laravel 12 — backend API and frontend delivery
• React 19 — frontend UI layer
• Inertia.js — bridges Laravel and React
• PostgreSQL 17+ (pgvector recommended for advanced features)
• Tailwind CSS — utility-first styling

Project Setup

git clone https://github.com/acara-app/plate.git
cd plate
git checkout -b feat/your-feature # or fix/your-fix

Create a feature branch instead of committing directly to main, then install and bootstrap dependencies:

composer setup

composer setup runs Composer and NPM installs, copies .env.example, generates the app key, and executes migrations.

Environment Configuration

Configure the credentials you need in .env. Only the providers you enable in code require keys.

# Optional AI Provider API Keys (choose any subset)
OPENAI_API_KEY=your_openai_key
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your_anthropic_key
GEMINI_API_KEY=your_gemini_key
DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=your_deepseek_key
GROQ_API_KEY=your_groq_key
MISTRAL_API_KEY=your_mistral_key
XAI_API_KEY=your_xai_key
OLLAMA_URL=http://localhost:11434 # if using local Ollama

# Optional OAuth
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=your_google_client_id
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET=your_google_client_secret

Running the Development Server

composer run dev

Use npm run build and your Herd .test domain when validating PWA installability. Clear site data if the service worker appears stale.

Testing & Code Quality

Run the full QA suite:

composer test

Targeted commands are also available:

composer test:unit         # Unit & feature tests (100% coverage enforced)
composer test:type-coverage
composer test:lint         # Pint, Rector, ESLint, Prettier
composer test:types        # PHPStan + TypeScript
composer lint              # Auto-fix styling issues

Data Initialization

Database Seeding

php artisan db:seed --class=GoalSeeder
php artisan db:seed --class=LifestyleSeeder
php artisan db:seed --class=DietaryPreferenceSeeder
php artisan db:seed --class=HealthConditionSeeder

USDA Food Database Import

Acara Plate relies on USDA FoodData Central for accurate nutrition data:

1. Download Foundation Foods and SR Legacy Foods (JSON) from FoodData Central.
2. Place the files in storage/sources/.
3. Import using the provided Artisan commands:

php artisan import:usda-food-foundation-data
php artisan import:usda-sr-legacy-food-data

# Use custom paths if needed
php artisan import:usda-food-foundation-data --path=/path/to/foundation.json
php artisan import:usda-sr-legacy-food-data --path=/path/to/legacy.json

Performance & Indexing

• Streaming import efficiently handles large JSON payloads.
• Foundation Foods (~1,200 entries) completes in ~2-5 seconds; SR Legacy (>8,000) in ~10-30 seconds.
• Operations run within database transactions and surface progress in real time.
• Full-text indexes on the description column accelerate search (created on MySQL/PostgreSQL, skipped on SQLite).

Deployment

Self-Hosting Options

• Laravel Forge: Automated provisioning for VPS providers (DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS).
• Ploi: Laravel Forge–style GUI for provisioning, deployments, cron management, and queue supervision.
• Laravel Cloud: Fully managed Laravel platform with zero server maintenance.

Production Environment

Our live deployment is hosted on Hetzner with Ploi coordinating releases. We treat this setup as a practical template for similar self-managed installations. The current server runs Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with 2 vCPUs, 2 GB RAM, and 50 GB SSD storage.

• Database: Dedicated PostgreSQL VM isolated from the application server
• Backups: pgBackRest provides automated, incremental backups

Future Enhancements

• IndexedDB caching for limited offline PWA usage (recipes, recent plans)
• Parallelized queue workers for faster meal plan generation

Accessing Acara Plate

The application is available as a regular responsive web app—open your configured domain in any modern browser to use it immediately. Installing the PWA is optional and simply delivers an app-like shell around the same experience.

Progressive Web App

Acara Plate ships as an installable PWA for mobile and desktop:

• Capabilities: Home screen install, standalone window, responsive layout
• Current Limitation: Offline mode is not yet available; an internet connection is required

Installation

• iOS/iPadOS (Safari): Share → Add to Home Screen
• Android (Chrome): Browser menu → Add to Home screen
• Desktop (Chrome/Edge): Click the install icon in the address bar or choose Install from the menu

Updates

• A new deployment becomes active after the service worker installs and the app performs a fresh reload
• If an update appears stuck, complete a hard refresh or clear storage for the domain

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Review the Contributing Guide for workflows, coding standards, and issue triage details.

Code of Conduct

Please read the Code of Conduct before participating in the community.

License

Acara Plate is released under the O’Saasy License.

Medical Disclaimer

Acara Plate is an open-source project designed for informational and educational purposes only.

Not Medical Advice: This software is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, dietary changes, or blood glucose management.

AI Limitations: Meal plans and nutritional data are generated by large language models (OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Groq, Mistral, XAI, etc.) via PrismPHP. While we strive for accuracy, LLMs can misstate allergens, ingredients, or macro values. Verify critical information independently.

No Liability: Authors and contributors are not liable for adverse effects, health complications, or damages arising from use of the software or reliance on its information.

Emergency: If you think you may have a medical emergency, contact your physician or emergency services immediately.

By using this software, you acknowledge you have read this disclaimer and agree to use the application at your own risk.