How Tonight decides what's for dinner, in plain words

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“Dinner, decided” is a bold promise, so it's fair to ask how. Here is what happens between you opening Tonight and a dinner appearing, in the order it happens. There's no mystery ingredient. Most of it is a few firm rules and some careful arithmetic.

Safety comes first

Before Tonight thinks about flavor, it works out what's off the table entirely. Every person in your household has a profile: allergies and how serious they are, intolerances, diets, and religious rules such as halal, kosher, no pork or no alcohol. Every dish in the library (148 dinners today, each reviewed by a person before it's published) is checked against every eater, ingredient by ingredient.

That check is plain code. A language model doesn't decide what's safe, and nothing about it is a guess. If a dish fails for anyone at the table, it's out. If the ingredient data leaves any doubt, it's out too. What survives is the only pool the rest of the process is allowed to choose from, so no amount of flavor can talk its way past a rule. Every dish that's left out is logged with the rule that removed it, so there's always a record of why. We wrote more about this in “Allergies are rules, not suggestions.”

What's in your kitchen, and how long you have

Next, Tonight looks at your pantry. It keeps a light picture of what you have, built from receipts you scan, items you tick off your list and the staples you've marked as always there. That picture fades with time. Spinach bought on Saturday is a confident yes on Sunday and a shrug by the following weekend, and Tonight's certainty about it drops accordingly.

Dishes that use what you have score well. Dishes that use what's about to turn score better, and ingredients Tonight is still confident about count for more than ones you may have used up. A missing lemon counts for less than a missing fish, because one is easier to fix on the way home. So a receipt scan after a shop makes the next few dinners better informed.

Then comes the clock. A dinner with an hour of work is no help on a night with practice at 6:30, so Tonight weighs hands-on time and total time against the evening you actually have, and on busy nights it leans fast. Press “I have 20 minutes” and it goes looking for the fastest safe dinner you can make right now.

What your table likes, and what it's had lately

Every person at your table has their own taste, learned from the dishes you swipe through at setup and from what you swap out along the way. Tonight scores a dish against everyone who's eating. Children's dislikes weigh heavily, because one refusal can sink a dinner for all of you. Somebody at practice, somebody at a friend's house? Tell it who is home tonight and the pick adjusts to the people actually at the table.

Then comes variety, which is where planning the week as a whole beats choosing night by night. The same main ingredient doesn't land on back-to-back nights. Cuisines are spaced out. A dish doesn't come back for a few weeks. The fastest dinner goes on your busiest night, and nights share ingredients where they can, so the parsley you buy for Wednesday also serves Thursday. A small allowance of new dishes is chosen close to what you already love, so surprises stay pleasant.

One reason, in plain words

Every pick comes with a reason, written from the same facts Tonight used to choose. Something like: uses your carrots before they turn, and fits a 25-minute Tuesday. If the reason mentions your carrots, it's because the carrots were part of the decision.

Most reasons are ordinary ones: something that needs using, a dinner that fits the time, a dish someone at your table loved. They should read like something a thoughtful friend would say, not like a report. In your week, tap any night to see why it's there.

A suggestion with no explanation is a black box, and nobody hands their dinner to a black box for long.

This is the detail we care about most. A suggestion with no explanation is a black box, and nobody hands their dinner to a black box for long. With the reason in view you can agree in a second, or disagree in a second, and both are useful.

Your controls

Tonight suggests. You decide. Whenever the answer isn't right, you have options.

• Not this: three other good answers, right away.
• I have 20 minutes: the fastest safe dinner you can make now.
• Not cooking tonight: tell it you're eating out, and the rest of the week shifts.
• On your planning day: lock the nights you love, swap the rest, skip a night or move a dinner to another day.

Your swaps aren't wasted, either. Each one tells Tonight a little more about your table, so next week's answers sit closer to what you would have chosen yourself.

Using these controls isn't a sign that Tonight got it wrong. Some nights you simply want fish, or you want nothing at all, and a good plan gives way gracefully. Locked nights stay put while the rest of the week shifts around them.

If you'd like to see the reasoning applied to your own kitchen, Tonight is free to try for 7 days.