Chatting with Whisp

chat ai assistant Whisp conversation ask specials history

What is Whisp?

Whisp is the assistant in The Saucery. It reads your family's recipes, meal plan, shopping list, staples, house rules and, with a store chosen, your supermarket's prices, so its answers are about what you actually cook.

Whisp is part of Saucery Pass, and it's for editors and admins. A viewer in the family can't chat. See Set up your family.

Opening Whisp

Tap Ask Whisp, the speech-bubble button beside the tabs at the bottom of the screen. Whisp opens over whatever you were looking at, and Done (iPhone) or × (Android) puts it away.

You can also choose Ask Whisp from the + menu on Recipes, and ask a question from Cook Mode without leaving your step. See Cook Mode.

Whisp on iPhone, answering on ruled notes: Ruby can pick out the spinach, and the chorizo and butter beans are on the list
Whisp answers on a note pinned to the page.

What Whisp can do

  • Answer cooking questions: "How long do I roast a chicken?" or "What can I use instead of cream?"
  • Find your recipes: "Do we have a pasta bake?" or "Something with chicken thighs." Your recipes are sorted into chapters, and a dinner is picked from Mains.
  • Write a recipe: "Write a recipe for beef stew." It's a draft with ingredients and steps, yours alone until you keep it. See Drafts.
  • Change a draft: "It was too salty." Whisp changes the draft itself and notes what changed, and after you cook it asks how it turned out.
  • Plan the week: "Put the pasta bake on Wednesday", "Swap Tuesday and Friday", "Make the week's dinners for 6", or "Mele's cooking Monday". Tuesday means the coming Tuesday, and Whisp says where each meal will land before it moves anything.
  • Pick a dinner that fits: "Something for Saturday, no chicken, under an hour." Whisp checks each recipe's ingredients for what you've ruled out (a word like meat, fish, dairy or nuts covers the lot), keeps to the time on the recipe card, prep and cooking together, and leaves out dinners already planned that week unless you ask for one again. If none of your recipes fits, it says so and can write one.
  • Change the shopping list: "Add milk and coffee beans."
  • Manage staples: "Add eggs to our staples."
  • Remember a house rule: "Remember we don't do spicy." It's saved to your house rules.
  • Look back: "When did we last make lasagne?"
  • Find a badge to earn: "Which badge could we earn this week?"
  • Explain the app: "How do I invite my partner?" It answers from this help centre.
  • Paint a recipe's picture: "Paint a new picture for the chicken pie, cut open with the filling showing."

Prices and specials

With Saucery Pass and a store chosen, Whisp reads your supermarket's own prices.

  • Ask what's on special at your store, or in one aisle, such as meat, chicken, seafood, fruit and veg or dairy. It answers biggest saving first, with the price, the deal and the pack size.
  • Ask whether butter is a good price. If butter is on your list, it looks at the product the list prices it from, and the same price history its page shows.
  • Ask for cheap dinners from the specials. Whisp knows how many your household cooks for, so it sets each special's pack size against what the recipe needs for that many people and says how many packs to buy.

It only says something is on special once it has looked it up at your store, and names the product.

Big changes are checked first

Before clearing a week's plan, removing staples or changing many recipes at once, Whisp tells you what will change and waits for you to say yes in your next message. Changing one recipe, or planning or removing a single night, happens straight away.

Private recipes stay private

A recipe someone in your family keeps to themselves stays out of Whisp's answers to everyone else, as it does everywhere else in the app.

It knows where you are

Whisp knows which screen you opened it from. Looking at a recipe, ask "can I halve this?" and it knows which recipe you mean. On the meal plan, ask "what should we have on Thursday?" and it sees the plan.

Conversations

Each chat is saved, so you can come back to it.

  • On iPhone: tap the clock at the top left to see Conversations. Start a new one with New Chat, or tap an old one under Past Chats.
  • On Android: the + at the top starts a new chat, and the clock opens your chat history.

A reply finishes even if you leave. Lock your phone, switch apps or lose signal while Whisp is writing, and the whole reply is in the conversation when you come back.

Unsent words are kept. Words typed into a new chat and not sent are kept for an hour, so they survive the app closing by accident, and then cleared so they don't turn up in front of a question days later. Words typed into a chat you've already started stay with that chat.

While Whisp is writing, the chat follows the reply down. Scroll up to read something earlier and it stays where you put it; scroll back to the bottom, or send another message, and it follows again.

Each reply uses one AI credit. See AI credits.

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