Bar Assistant is an all-in-one API solution for managing home bars, specifically tailored for cocktail recipes. It addresses the limitations of general recipe software by offering cocktail-centric features like ingredient substitution, ABV calculations, and unit switching. This benefits home bar enthusiasts and cocktail aficionados by streamlining recipe management, inventory tracking, and discovery.

How It Works

This project provides the backend API server for Bar Assistant. It employs Meilisearch for efficient, automatic data indexing, enabling fast filtering of cocktails by ABV, base ingredients, tags, and user inventory status. The architecture supports importing recipes from various formats (URL, JSON, YAML) and allows for custom ingredient substitutes, multiple images per resource, and detailed cocktail/ingredient information. It also integrates with LLM providers for generative AI features.

Quick Start & Requirements

• Installation: Deploy via Docker image (e.g., barassistant/server:v4.4.1).
• Prerequisites: Requires Redis and Meilisearch instances, configurable via environment variables (REDIS_HOST, MEILISEARCH_HOST, MEILISEARCH_KEY).
• Links: API demo, frontend demo.

Highlighted Details

• Features over 500 cocktail recipes and 250+ base ingredients with detailed categorization.
• Supports managing multiple bars, bar members, and fine-grained user roles.
• Enables inventory tracking, shopping list generation, and recipe recommendations based on user preferences.
• Offers robust data management including import/export, public sharing, custom collections, and user-specific notes.

Maintenance & Community

Contributions are welcomed via CONTRIBUTING.md. While there are no direct community links (Discord/Slack) or a public roadmap mentioned, a community-maintained Raycast extension exists. Donations are accepted to support development.

Licensing & Compatibility

Licensed under the permissive MIT license, allowing for broad compatibility and commercial use without significant restrictions.

Limitations & Caveats

This repository exclusively contains the API server; a separate frontend client (e.g., Salt Rim) is necessary for a complete user experience.