SaltyBytes API

Backend for SaltyBytes — a recipe app for iOS and Android. Search the web for recipes without the ads and life stories, import from any source, generate with AI, and cook hands-free with voice-guided cooking mode.

Built with Go, Gin, PostgreSQL + pgvector, and Claude AI.

See also: saltybytes-app — the Flutter iOS client | saltybytes-dashboard — the operational metrics dashboard.

Features

Recipe Search & Discovery — Search the web for recipes and get clean results — no ads, no SEO spam, no scrolling past someone's vacation story. Multi-tier pipeline: exact-match cache, pgvector semantic similarity, and Brave web search. Import any result directly into your collection.

Multi-Source Import — Import recipes from URLs (with JSON-LD extraction and Firecrawl fallback), photos (vision-based), freeform text, or manual entry. A canonical recipe cache deduplicates URL imports with automatic background refresh.

AI Recipe Generation — Create recipes through conversation with Claude when you can't find what you're looking for. Fork existing recipes into new variants, regenerate with feedback, and explore branching version history through a recipe tree.

Family Allergen Analysis — AI-powered ingredient analysis detects common allergens (dairy, nuts, shellfish, wheat, soy, sesame, etc.) with confidence scoring. Cross-reference results against family members' dietary profiles.

Real-Time Cooking Mode — WebSocket-based hands-free cooking. Voice commands are transcribed (Whisper), classified by intent (Claude), and answered contextually. Supports ephemeral recipe edits during cooking.

AI Dietary Interviews — Conversational dietary profiling for family members, covering allergies, intolerances, and preferences.

Architecture

Handlers → Services → Repositories → PostgreSQL (GORM)

Layer	Purpose
internal/handlers/	HTTP request handling and validation
internal/service/	Business logic, AI orchestration
internal/repository/	Database access via interfaces (DI-friendly)
internal/models/	Data models and GORM schema
internal/ai/	Anthropic, OpenAI, and Brave Search providers
internal/ws/	WebSocket server for cooking mode
internal/middleware/	JWT auth, rate limiting, request context
configs/	AI prompt templates (YAML)

External Services

Service	Used For
Anthropic Claude	Recipe generation, allergen analysis, dietary interviews, voice intent classification, cooking Q&A
OpenAI	DALL-E 3 (recipe images), Whisper (voice transcription), text-embedding-3-small (vector search)
Brave Search	Web recipe discovery
AWS S3	Recipe image storage
PostgreSQL + pgvector	Data persistence and semantic similarity search

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Go 1.24+
• PostgreSQL 16+ with the pgvector extension
• API keys for Anthropic, OpenAI, and an AWS account for S3

Setup

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/windoze95/saltybytes-api.git
cd saltybytes-api

2. Configure environment variables

cp .env.example .env

See docs/env-setup.md for a detailed walkthrough of every variable, including how to create API keys and configure AWS.

3. Run with Docker Compose (recommended)

docker compose up

This starts the API and a PostgreSQL instance. The database schema is auto-migrated on startup.

4. Or run directly

go run ./cmd/api

Environment Variables

Variable	Required	Purpose
DATABASE_URL	Yes	PostgreSQL connection string
JWT_SECRET_KEY	Yes	Token signing secret
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	Yes	Claude — recipe gen, allergens, voice, dietary
OPENAI_API_KEY	Yes	DALL-E, Whisper, embeddings
AWS_REGION	Yes	AWS region for S3
S3_BUCKET	Yes	Image storage bucket
ID_HEADER	Yes	Request validation header
BRAVE_SEARCH_KEY	No	Web recipe search (gracefully disabled if absent)
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID	No	S3 auth (falls back to IAM role)
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY	No	S3 auth (falls back to IAM role)
PORT	No	Server port (default: 8080)
GIN_MODE	No	Set to release for production

API Overview

Authentication

• POST /v1/users — Create account
• POST /v1/auth/login — Login
• POST /v1/auth/refresh — Refresh token

Recipes

• POST /v1/recipes/chat — Generate recipe via conversation
• PUT /v1/recipes/:id/chat — Regenerate with feedback
• POST /v1/recipes/:id/fork — Fork into a new variant
• GET /v1/recipes/:id/tree — Version history tree
• GET /v1/recipes — List user's recipes
• DELETE /v1/recipes/:id — Delete recipe

Import

• POST /v1/recipes/import/url — Import from URL
• POST /v1/recipes/import/photo — Import from photo
• POST /v1/recipes/import/text — Import from text
• POST /v1/recipes/import/manual — Manual entry
• POST /v1/recipes/preview/url — Quick URL preview

Search

• GET /v1/recipes/search — Search recipes (semantic + web)
• GET /v1/recipes/similar/:id — Find similar recipes

Allergens

• POST /v1/recipes/:id/allergens/analyze — Run allergen analysis
• GET /v1/recipes/:id/allergens — Get analysis results
• POST /v1/recipes/:id/allergens/check-family — Cross-reference family dietary profiles

Family & Dietary

• POST /v1/family — Create family
• POST /v1/family/members — Add member
• PUT /v1/family/members/:id/dietary — Update dietary profile
• POST /v1/family/members/:id/dietary/interview — AI dietary interview

Cooking Mode

• GET /v1/ws/cook/:id — WebSocket connection for hands-free cooking

Testing

All tests run offline — no database, network, or external services required. Services accept repository interfaces for dependency injection.

# Run all tests
go test ./... -count=1

# Verbose
go test ./... -v -count=1

# Specific package
go test ./internal/service/ -v

# Lint
go vet ./...

Deployment

The CI/CD pipeline runs automatically via GitHub Actions:

• On PR to main — vet, test, build validation
• On merge to main — vet, test, Docker build, push to ECR, deploy to ECS (Fargate)

Manual deployment

docker build --platform linux/amd64 -t saltybytes-api .

The Dockerfile uses a multi-stage build (Go 1.24 builder → distroless runtime) for a minimal production image.

Tech Stack

• Language: Go 1.24
• Framework: Gin
• ORM: GORM
• Database: PostgreSQL 17 + pgvector
• AI: Anthropic Claude, OpenAI (DALL-E, Whisper, Embeddings)
• Search: Brave Search API
• Storage: AWS S3
• Auth: JWT (golang-jwt)
• WebSocket: gorilla/websocket
• Logging: zap
• Container: Docker (distroless base)
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions → ECR → ECS Fargate

License

Licensed under the Business Source License 1.1. You may use, modify, and contribute to this code, but you may not offer it as a competing commercial product. The license converts to Apache 2.0 on the change date specified in the LICENSE file.