Skylight MCP, Part 3: Planning a Real Week

Part 1 covered the problem and setup. Part 2 covered the rules. This post walks through planning an actual week (Sunday, November 8 through Thursday, November 12) from the first prompt to the grocery list on the fridge, including the problem I didn't see coming.

The weekly prompt

I keep one prompt and reuse it every week, changing only the dates. It's split into four parts: what to do before planning, how to plan, what to show me, and what to do after I approve.

Let's plan dinners for next week (Sunday [date] through Thursday [date]).
Add Friday/Saturday too if I mention them.

BEFORE PLANNING
1. Read the project docs: planning-rules.md, grocery-planning.md,
   recipe-note-format.md and claude/skylight-config.md. Follow them as
   written, especially the sports-night, make-ahead and starch rules.
2. List the recipes in Apple Notes (Multi-Pot XL, Mains, Crock Pot) so you
   know what we already have. Check the SYNC footers for Use, Make-ahead
   and Active time.
3. Check the Skylight calendar for the week, so you can catch anything that
   changes a night (no practice, a game, an event).
4. Ask me what's in the pantry and freezer that I want to use up before you
   pick meals.

PLANNING
- Sports nights (Mon-Thu by default) get MultiPot meals with night-before
  prep and a start time no later than 3:45.
- Include any keepers due for rotation (see the Keepers section).
- Research and suggest 1-2 NEW MultiPot recipes the kids are likely to like.
  Base them on their known favorites and our food rules. Tell me where each
  idea came from.
- Apply the starch rule across the whole week and show me which night uses
  which starch.
- Watch sodium, and flag anything high.

SHOW ME FIRST
Give me a menu table (night, dinner, how it works, starch), the prep
schedule, and the grocery list sorted by store (fewest stores possible).
Make no changes until I approve.

AFTER I APPROVE
1. Apple Notes: create a note for every new recipe and update existing ones
   as needed, using the exact recipe-note-format layout and SYNC footer.
   MultiPot notes go in Multi-Pot XL with the #multipot tag.
2. Skylight recipes: create or update each one with FULL detail.
3. Skylight meal plan: add each dinner on its date (Dinner category), plus a
   separate PREP entry on each prep night with the prep steps.
4. Skylight Grocery List: read open items first and merge instead of
   duplicating. Use store sections and a Pantry Check section with total
   amounts and the recipes that use them. Exclude anything I said I already
   have.
5. Write each note's Skylight ID and sync date into its SYNC footer.
6. Finish with a log of everything created or changed, and remind me to
   re-activate the #multipot tags.

The "show me first, make no changes until I approve" part is the whole ballgame. Planning is a conversation. Writing is a batch job at the end.

Step 1: Gather context

Claude reads the four project docs, lists the recipe notes in each folder (reading the SYNC footers for Use, Make-ahead, and Active time), pulls the week's events and any existing meals from Skylight, and reads the open items on the Grocery List.

Then it asks what I want to use up. This week I had TJ's Chimichurri Chicken Skewers in the freezer and three bagged salad mixes in the fridge. Both got built into the plan and left off the grocery list.

Step 2: Mixing favorites with new recipes

The plan should be mostly known-good recipes, with one or two new ones each week so the rotation keeps growing. The prompt asks for 1-2 new MultiPot recipes the kids are likely to like, based on what they already eat (the keepers and kid preferences from Part 2), and asks Claude to cite where each idea came from. I want to know whose recipe I'm riffing on.

This week's new recipes:

• Chicken Philly Cheesesteak (MultiPot). Built from two published slow-cooker versions (The Seasoned Mom and The Diary of a Real Housewife). One source said breast meat has the best texture at 2-3 hours on HIGH, which fits our HI 3:00. Claude dropped the banana peppers and used Lowes pick-n-prep peppers and onions. The reasoning for the kids: they already like pizza chicken and sloppy joes.
• Creamy Chicken Bacon Ranch (MultiPot). The "crack chicken" style recipe (Cookies & Cups calls hers the original): chicken breasts, cream cheese, ranch seasoning, bacon. The kids already love creamy alfredo and the Boursin dish. Per our rules, the cream cheese goes in at the end.

Those sit alongside two existing recipes from Notes: Pot Roast & Boursin Mashed Cauliflower and Two-Protein Taco Night, both MultiPot.

Step 3: The first draft

Claude came back with a menu table, a prep schedule, and a grocery list. Here's the first draft of the menu:

Five different starches, no pasta night, and cauliflower once. The starch rule is trivial to check when it's a column in the table.

It also flagged a timing problem on its own: chuck needs HI 4:00, so Tuesday's 7:15 dinner means a 3:15 start. If nobody can start it before 3:45, the alternative is HI 3:30 starting at 3:45. Still ready at 7:15, but the manual's chart puts pot roast at 3.5 to 4.5 hours on HI, so it might come out a little less tender.

Step 4: Adjustments

This is where the back-and-forth happens. Claude asks multiple-choice questions for the decisions, and I answer briefly. Nothing gets written yet.

Kids and cooked peppers

My first correction: the kids won't eat cooked peppers or onions, so a MegaZone cheesesteak doesn't work. Claude reworked Monday into a DualZone version:

• Zone 1: chicken only, which the kids eat on hoagie rolls.
• Zone 2: peppers and onions for the adults.
• Both on Slow Cook HI 3:00, start 3:45. Provolone melts onto the chicken at dinner.

That also cut the pick-n-prep peppers and onions on the grocery list from 3 cups to 1.5. The kid rule went into planning-rules.md so it never comes up again.

Tuesday start time

I picked the 3:15 start with the full HI 4:00. Tender pot roast wins.

The pot conflict

The DualZone change created a new problem. Monday's dinner now used both 3.3-qt pots, and Tuesday's pot roast had been planned to sit in those same pots from Sunday night. Claude caught it (I hadn't) and revised the prep schedule:

• Sunday evening (~30 min): load Monday's cheesesteak into both 3.3-qt pots. Season the pot roast beef and bag the cauliflower with its broth, in lidded containers.
• Monday after dinner (~5 min): wash the 3.3-qt pots and tip in the pot roast and cauliflower.
• Tuesday after dinner (~20 min): wash the pots and load both taco pots.
• Wednesday daytime (~20 min): cook the bacon, then load the Bacon Ranch chicken into the 7.5-qt pot.

The "prep into lidded containers, tip it in the night before" pattern became a standing rule.

Sodium on the ranch

I keep ranch seasoning packets on hand and wanted to use them instead of a homemade blend. Claude switched to 1 packet for 2.5 lb of chicken with no added salt (the source recipe uses 2 packets for 3 lb), added 1/4 cup sour cream to tone down the salt, and flagged it as the week's biggest single sodium source. Ranch packets came off the grocery list.

Housekeeping

Claude also noticed two notes we weren't even using this week had problems (Sloppy Joes listed cherry tomatoes as a side, and BBQ Pulled Chicken was missing its #multipot tag line) and asked whether to fix them in this round. It also added a new Mains note for the TJ's skewers, since the kids ate them and they make a good quick night.

Step 5: The shelf-life problem

Here's the one I didn't see coming. We usually shop once, on Sunday. Raw chicken and ground meat are only good in the fridge for 1-2 days from purchase (USDA / FoodSafety.gov). A prepped pot sits raw overnight, so the clock runs from shopping day to the dinner night. Chicken bought Sunday is fine for Monday. Chicken bought Sunday for Wednesday tacos or Thursday's Bacon Ranch is over the limit.

I'd been doing this for years without thinking about it. Oops.

Once we sorted out that week, I asked Claude to make it a permanent rule. It added a Protein shelf life section to grocery-planning.md:

When a protein is over its limit, there are two fixes:

1. Freeze on shopping day, then thaw in the fridge. Move it to the fridge the morning of the day before its prep night. The grocery item gets labeled "FREEZE the X lb," the freeze step goes in that day's PREP entry, the thaw step in the later one, and a THAW reminder goes on my calendar.
2. Mid-week trip. Late-week proteins go in a " - " section (like "Trader Joes - Wednesday") with a SHOP reminder. Best when I'm home that day or several late-week items are perishable.

Every plan summary now includes a shelf-life table (protein, buy day, cook day, OK / freeze / mid-week) before anything is written.

Step 6: Generating the grocery list

Once the plan was final, the grocery list came from the recipes themselves, not from Skylight's button. The process:

1. Collect every ingredient from the week's recipes, including the "on the side" raw veggies.
2. Remove what's already covered: the freezer skewers, the three salad mixes, the ranch packets.
3. Combine duplicates into one line with a total.
4. Split staples from purchases. Spices, oils, butter, broth, and condiments go to Pantry Check.
5. Assign each purchase a store using the decision tree from Part 2 (brand named? that store; pre-cut produce? Lowes; and so on, defaulting to Trader Joe's).
6. Read the open items on the Skylight list and update quantities on anything already there instead of adding a second line.
7. Show me the list, then write it and set each item's section.

The Pantry Check section for this week looked like this after the revisions:

• Garlic powder: 4 tsp
• Onion powder: 3 tsp
• Salt: 2 1/4 tsp
• Black pepper: 3/4 tsp
• Butter: 3 tbsp (mash, Philly peppers)

Each label includes which recipes use it, so I know what to hold back if I'm short. On Sunday I walk the pantry, delete what I have, and move anything I need into a store section.

Step 7: The writes

After I approved, Claude did the writes in order:

1. Apple Notes: created the new recipe notes (Chicken Cheesesteak DualZone, Creamy Chicken Bacon Ranch, TJ's Chimichurri Skewers) using the exact format, and fixed the two notes flagged earlier.
2. Skylight recipes: created or updated each recipe with full ingredients and steps.
3. Skylight meal plan: a Dinner entry on each night, attached to its recipe, plus a separate PREP entry on each prep night with the steps.
4. Calendar reminders on my calendar: 9:30 PM prep reminders, a start-time reminder for each dinner, and any THAW or SHOP reminders. (Switch the frame's default calendar to mine, create the events assigned to me, switch it back.)
5. Grocery List: items with quantities, in store sections, plus Pantry Check.
6. SYNC footers: wrote each note's Skylight ID and sync date back into Notes.
7. A log of everything created or changed, and a reminder to re-activate the #multipot tags.

Start to finish, the whole thing takes less time than I used to spend just clicking meals into Skylight.

What I'd tell someone trying this

• Get the plumbing working with read-only checks first. Healthcheck, list frames, list categories. Especially if you have more than one frame.
• Write rules down as you go. Every correction you make once should go into a project doc so you never make it twice.
• Define formats by example. Fix one note by hand and say "this one, always." It works much better than describing whitespace.
• Plan first, write last. A menu table with a starch column and a prep schedule is easy to review. Batched writes at the end are easy to verify.
• Let the model catch the boring problems. Pot conflicts, start times, sodium, and shelf life are exactly the kind of thing I'd miss at 9 PM on a Saturday.

What's next

• Breakfast and lunch planning (which is why the starch rule is so strict).
• Building the kids' lunch packs out properly.
• Turning the weekly prompt into a reusable skill.
• More contributions back to skylight-mcp as I hit rough edges. The first one came out of the chore chart, which is Part 4.

Comments welcome!