Recipe Card & Ingredient Substitution
Scenario You're the first engineer at Homemade. The founder, Joel, is presenting the product in 48 hours to a program manager at Seattle Hospital who oversees their oncology family support program. The feature he needs to demo: a family…
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What You'll Be Doing
Scenario
You're the first engineer at Homemade. The founder, Joel, is presenting the product in 48 hours to a program manager at Seattle Hospital who oversees their oncology family support program.
The feature he needs to demo: a family texts the app and says, "I don't have heavy cream for this soup — what can I swap?" The app returns a smart substitution suggestion that respects the family's dietary guidelines (in this case: low-fat, low-sodium). The family is at the hospital. They're on their phone. They need it to work.
Your job: build the recipe display and ingredient substitution feature as a proof-of-concept, then write a short architecture document explaining how it works and what it would take to go from here to production.
This is not a full product build. You have roughly 30–35 minutes of working time plus 5–7 minutes to record your walkthrough video. Build to demonstrate your thinking, not to ship.
You may use any programming language, framework, or LLM provider you like (Claude, GPT, Gemini, or any other). The point is not which tools you pick — it is how you use them.
Constraints to Consider
- Mobile-first, low-end device target. The demo will be shown on a parent's phone at the hospital. Your component must render without horizontal scroll on a 375px-wide viewport. Assume limited bandwidth.
- Stateless LLM interaction. Each substitution request must work without storing any user-specific information. You may include the recipe context and a dietary guideline category in your prompt (e.g., "low-fat, low-sodium"), but no personal identifier, patient name, or health record data may appear in the LLM request.
- Graceful degradation required. If the LLM call fails (timeout, rate limit, API unavailability) the feature must remain usable. Showing an error and stopping is not acceptable.
- Single-file or single-component scope. Your primary artifact must be a single runnable file (e.g., an HTML file with embedded CSS and JS, or a single React or Vue component). No multi-service setup, no database, no authentication required. Keep the surface area minimal.
AI Usage Guidance
We expect you to use AI tools. We evaluate how you use them, not whether you use them. Evidence of iteration, redirection, and critical evaluation scores higher than a polished output with no process documentation.
The single highest-signal indicator: your video answer to the mandatory AI question. If you cannot name a specific moment where you redirected AI output, evaluators will assume you did not.
Mandatory AI question for your video: Walk me through one moment where you disagreed with, pushed back on, or redirected what the AI gave you, and what you did instead. Name the specific moment. Explain what the AI produced that didn't meet the bar, what you did differently, and why.
Communication note: Speak naturally. This is a technical role; we assess clarity of ideas and reasoning, not verbal polish, accent, or filler words.
How Your Work Will Be Scored
What to Submit
Recipe Component
Format: no restrictions
A single runnable file (HTML/JS, React component, Vue component, or equivalent) that renders the recipe below and supports the ingredient substitution flow. It must be runnable locally without any cloud setup. Use this recipe as your starting data:
{
"title": "Creamy Tomato Soup",
"servings": 4,
"dietary_guidelines": ["low-fat", "low-sodium"],
"ingredients": [
{ "item": "canned crushed tomatoes", "amount": "28 oz" },
{ "item": "heavy cream", "amount": "1/2 cup" },
{ "item": "onion", "amount": "1 medium, diced" },
{ "item": "garlic", "amount": "3 cloves, minced" },
{ "item": "vegetable broth", "amount": "2 cups" },
{ "item": "olive oil", "amount": "1 tbsp" },
{ "item": "salt", "amount": "1/2 tsp" },
{ "item": "black pepper", "amount": "1/4 tsp" }
],
"steps": [
"Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium heat.",
"Add onion and garlic; saute until softened, about 5 minutes.",
"Add crushed tomatoes and vegetable broth; bring to a simmer.",
"Stir in heavy cream; simmer 10 minutes.",
"Season with salt and pepper. Blend until smooth and serve."
]
}
The ingredient swap trigger: A user taps on "heavy cream" (or a swap button next to it) and requests a substitution that respects the low-fat, low-sodium guidelines.
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README Document
Format: .pdf, .doc, .docx, .rtf, .txt, .md
Three required sections, no more, no fewer:
Section A — Architecture Decisions (200–300 words): What choices did you make and why? Cover your LLM integration approach, at least two explicit trade-offs ("I chose X over Y because..."), and at least one assumption you'd need to validate before scaling this beyond a proof-of-concept.
Section B — Production Readiness Considerations: Before Homemade deploys this feature to Seattle Children's Hospital, what would need to change? Describe 3–5 specific technical additions or considerations. For each, indicate whether it would block hospital deployment or whether it is a later-sprint improvement.
Section C — AI Usage Log (Mandatory): This is not a trick. We want to see how you work with AI, not whether you used it. For each significant interaction with an AI tool, briefly note:
- What you asked the AI to help with
- What it gave you
- What you kept, changed, or rejected, and why
Three interactions documented is sufficient. The log does not need to be exhaustive.
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Video Walkthrough
Format: .mp4, .mov, .webm
Record as MP4 or MOV and upload directly on the Provn platform as a separate file. Cover:
- The problem and your solution (60 seconds)
- A walkthrough of your component: what it does and the decisions behind it
- A walkthrough of Section B: what you'd add before shipping to a hospital
- The mandatory AI question (see AI Usage Guidance in the Overview)
- What you'd do differently with more time
Speak naturally. We assess clarity of technical ideas, not verbal polish, accent, or filler words.
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