M: There should be a file called Recipes from Book in the project folder. It's an ODS file. Are you able to read it? And if you are, without going through the entirety of it, but just the first, I don't know, 20 entries in the spreadsheet file, can you identify what's going on with the spreadsheet?

M: I just thought to check and realized that the spreadsheet file has multiple sheets. The primary one, I believe, is... Let me check here. I believe the sheets named DailyWeekly or DailyWeekly2 have the same information but sorted differently. Either one of those is what I'm talking about. I can reform the file into CSVs if you can't read it, but I'd rather not have to go through that. Anyway, that's the reason why I stopped, is to let you know which sheet to look at when I ask you to look at... ...the spreadsheet, its first 20 entries, and tell me if you can identify what's going on. The best choice probably would be DailyWeekly2 in terms of which sheet in the file to look at.

M: Pretty close on all of them. I mean, like, usably close. Except maybe for number four. That was a column that I entered in when I was feeling more optimistic about my... ...efforts. ...in terms of getting stuff gradually done over time because I held an interest. I honestly cannot fully explain to you the non-date versions of Part V from my current memory. You're right, there is a pattern there, but... ...I don't know. Nothing that I'm able to rebuild from memory. I think I made this a couple years ago and just did it almost while I was half-asleep, but... ...my body was still awake. And... ...and number eight also seems to escape me as to what I was doing it for, but you're right about that as well. Okay, the reason why this is in a... ...individual project file is because I'm going to need you to refer to that sheet in that... ...file for at least the first part of a project. I'm hoping that it doesn't take too much effort because even with a thousand entries, I know this is only a partial collection of... ...what's available. Okay, just moving on. In the source column, you're right about the indication of... ...existence due to a particular place or knowledge about it because of reading at a particular place. The reason I'm making a note at all is because if it's called for in terms of a search, you can treat those as being websites. The reason I got triggered to mention this at all is because one of the sources is Allrecipes. The software autocorrected it to two words, but that's a one-word website. And all of the rest of those either are websites or have a particular website form. That doesn't relate to the first step. I just wanted to put that down while I was thinking of it. Okay, the first step is going to involve asking you to use the third column and, when necessary, the sixth column to use the entirety of that sheet from the file Recipes from Book. That is, the sheet labeled Daily Weekly 2, and go through the entirety of the recipe list, column 3, and create a text file that is importable to a spreadsheet program that creates, at minimum, a categorized list of these recipes in terms of what type and application each of them have, and then subcategories to further specify their use. We aren't starting on that right now. We are defining the parameters for that first step. Once we've got everything consolidated, I will turn on research mode and ask you to create that file. You should not be using any other columns for your effort. Like, don't refer to the fourth column, even though that's what I was doing. I'm asking for your analysis to provide the categories, not my suggestions. Although, in shaping the question over the next couple messages, my input will be involved so you won't be just flying completely blind. The reason I said you might need to use column F is that some of the names are brief or otherwise unclear, at which point you should go online and, using the site at column F, the sixth column, as a starting point, try and figure out what's being talked about. Like, as an example, one of the entries you probably looked at is a Gatsby. Without context, I wouldn't expect you to know what that was, although you might. But if you went to Food Network, which is associated with it, and looked up Gatsby, you would find out it's a particular type of sandwich. That's the reason why I said that you should use column 6 as necessary, in case you have that kind of contextually vague recipe from column 3. So, what I want you to do right now is to process the instructions that I've given here. Repeat back to me what you think I'm going to ask you to do once we've clarified everything, and then ask me a couple questions that I can use to start telling you about what I want in terms of categories. Oh, as another specific, the categories will not be exclusive. Like, being included as a sandwich would not exclude it from being also classified as a light meal or a snack, which makes me realize that the format of the text file that I'm asking you to output is something we also need to confirm.

M: Okay, with what you've got so far, you seem to be following everything that I was asking. One modification to number two, or broadening of permissions perhaps, is that you are allowed to go online and use column six for clarification, not just when it becomes absolutely necessary, but when it becomes inherently useful, particularly given some of the categorizations that I'm asking you to do. Like, let me see an example, chocolate silk pie is obviously a dessert that involves chocolate. So it may be simple, but depending on the categories that you're checking it against, something like chicken pot pie, even just making sure that it's not a dessert, would be enough to qualify as a reason to go online. And then there's the question of including preparation method categories. Like, I'm about to read you a list after I've reviewed what you've got so far to give you an indication of where my current recipe program is in terms of subdividing into categories. So if there were hypothetically an oven subcategory and a fried subcategory, it may be necessary to investigate as much as you can in order to figure out whether the preparation of the chicken for the pot pie involves just adding it to the pie or some form of parboiling or searing the exterior or whatever. And then when you start to get into things more like Mexican, where it's, from one perspective, a bunch of separately prepared ingredients, you may have to investigate at the very least the ingredient list a little bit further. Also, because it's hand-typed, you can assume, first, that there will be occasional misspellings, including ones that look like valid words. For example, just in that first 20, there's one where the word blanket becomes blanked. I typed these in manually, and so those errors or perhaps elimination of smaller words just to make it easier is something you should expect. So, in terms of finding information about this recipe, you can assume that the recipe column includes what I would need to do a search manually, rather than being the exact explicit title. Another caveat or warning or whatever is that some sites, at least from the user perspective, will redirect or otherwise hide information from users unless they're a member. I am actually a member of the New York Times cooking site, but I know that you can't use it, which is why I started talking in this direction. Do the best you can, especially if you're trying to figure out the name of a recipe and what it means in culinary terms. Use any tricks you might have to try and get the information necessary for your purposes, like using perhaps a search engine cached version or looking at the raw code instead of trying to render it and see what happens. If none of those tricks let you see what you need to, then use a little bit of creativity to try and, at the least, ascertain as much as you can by referring to other similar recipes. Because a lot of them likely are perhaps functionally different, but in terms of results, similar enough for categorization purposes. If you manage to reach a point where you cannot get a single category for something, or cannot get a particular degree of subcategories, which will make more sense when we get to talking about that, or any other massive problem, you can create a category that we'll call Problematic and include that recipe, as well as in any other categories you might have been able to derive. As I'm reading through things and thinking about what I'm going to be asking you to do, I'm going to modify what you had under number five. I would like the result to be flat. That is, I don't want the kind of, you know, database package that would come if I was asking for a database, where it's a bunch of files strung together. But my being able to read it is secondary. The file I want you to actually create still should be a text file. But the JSON structure is fine because, as I thought about it, I realized the second part will involve asking you to randomly choose, or at least randomly suggest, items from a persistent form of the file that you create according to the various subcategories that are used. So since my final purpose is to be able to ask you to suggest a main dish and a side for dinner from the file you produce, you should orient the output of the text file to make your future efforts in that direction easiest. Okay, rather than answer your question about the categories directly, although that would be a good way to go if I didn't have something to work with, what I'm going to do is first read you the current objective categories that I've got going in my recipe program, and then after that perhaps try and... hmm. Okay, what's going to happen regarding these categories is that I'm going to read you what I've got right now, and then you are going to look at what I give you and see if you can sift them into various categories and subcategories, and then once that's done, I'll look at it and we'll discuss whether any of the categories and subcategories need completion. I don't immediately foresee the necessity for three levels of category, but as you go through things, it may be... hmm, no it won't. Sorry, disregard that. Two levels should be fine. Any circumstance I can think of at the third level would be redundant, so long as the third variable doesn't already exist. No, I mean so long as the third variable already exists in its own category or subcategory, because at that point, it would just be doing essentially a search for the intersection of, you know, two subcategories. I will make one definite ruling. I don't think at the moment that there should be any circumstance where a recipe fits into a category, but not into a subcategory. So all the recipes should be two categories deep. That may change after I read you these things, but let's start with that as a guideline, an initial point. And after I have read you my current list of recipe categories, if you do see a situation in which a tertiary level of category could be useful, please say so, because it's likely that either it's a topic that there should be a primary category for instead of being included as a third option, or it's a unique situation and I really want to know about it. I also just thought of another item not related to Categories itself, but that you need to be aware of when you're reading the original spreadsheet. I want you to avoid duplicates, but only full duplicates. By which I mean, let's say hypothetically, there are three separate entries. One is a Grilled Cheese Sandwich from Food Network, one is a Grilled Cheese Sandwich from the New York Times, and one is listed as a Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Pickles from All Recipes. Those are all distinct recipes. Oh, okay, to make it clear, let's say there is also a fourth entry of Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Pickles from the New York Times. Those are all four separate recipes. I'm willing to deal with the redundancy myself, because it's possible that they are exactly the same, but it's also possible that one of the entries I've already looked at the full recipe and noticed a particular element that distinguishes it. So unless both the recipe name and the source are exactly the same, it's not a duplicate. But there still may be duplicates, so you should keep an eye out for that as well. Before I get into the listing, as far as the output text goes, I think I actually covered that when I was going through 1 and 2. Although, if there's any information missing, you should let me know. All right, now here's the list of categories that I'm currently using in my recipe software. And just as a reminder, there are a lot of overlaps, so recipes have more than one potential category. Okay, so I've got Main Dishes, Side Dishes, Breakfast, Snacks, Appetizer, Drinks, Drinks.alcoholic, Salad.green, Salad.mixed, Dessert.frozen, Dessert.baked, Dessert.otherwise, Sauces, Dips-slash-Jams, Ingredients, Family Gatherings, Personal, For People, Pasta, Soup-slash-Stew-slash-Chili, Casseroles-slash-Stir-Fry, Sandwiches-slash-Wraps, Pizza, Cake-slash-Pie, Cookie-slash-Handheld, Grill, Fryer, Air Fryer, Slow Cooker, Bread, Beef, Pork, Fish, Crustacean-slash-Shellfish, Chicken-slash-Poultry, Meat-dot-Non-Standard, Egg, Egg Whites, Tofu, Cheese-slash-Dairy, Potatoes, Vegetables, Grains, Legumes, Nuts, Fruit, Large Batch, Asian, African, Mexican, Exotic Equipment, Seasonal, Blender, Intentionally Spicy.

M: Just to be specific and clear, when you use Column 6, it's paired with needing to go online in order to figure something out about Column 3. Like there is no time that I can imagine you would need to go online where you didn't also need to refer to Column 6. And I can't think of any situation where you would need to refer to Column 6 without going online, except maybe if it appears to be a duplicate entry. In Part 5, one minor adjustment. You may have to make a case-by-case evaluation if the title is particularly short, or if it looks like one of the entries might have been misspelled or autocorrected weirdly. But just make sure that if it is a duplicate that it can't be accidental, and if it's not a duplicate that it's not because of some sort of autocorrect. Like pulling from that pigs-in-a-blank example from the 20 rows you pulled already. If you look up one version and there's absolutely nothing in it and the other version exists, the one where it's fixed to blanket, hypothetically, then you know it's a duplicate as long as column 6 matches as well. And if column 6 doesn't match, well then you've identified a second recipe. Your prototype layout looks like it would include all the information, but I would like you to do a a little bit of analysis and decide whether that version is easier for you to do random lookups on, or if using the categories as the prime field would provide a larger but easier to search in terms of just getting a quick example randomly from each category situation. So, just take a look at the version you gave me, and a version where the primary field is categories instead of recipes. And let me know what that means in terms of size and usability. Quick usability, because the purpose of this project is to get to a situation where I can take a giant amount of recipes that, without outside assistance, I have no hope of being able to you know, begin working through in terms of trying them out. And the optimization for that activity might be different from, say, creating a backup for a static database used for online searching, given how you load things into things into information. Because I don't want to create a situation where on a small scale it's fine, but on the full list you end up making selections only from the first 10 or so selections, because your memory prevents you from being able to search deeper when coming up with the randomization list based on what I'm looking for. Okay, you've got the list of categories. Please take a look at it and then suggest to me suggest to me what you feel would be a proper set of categories and where each of the entries I gave you would fall as a subcategory. Do that first, and then I will ask you to take a look at the results and suggest ways to make the subcategory list more complete.

M: Before I look at it, I'm thinking that your way of describing things calls for me being specific that I appreciate the idea that you don't want to include a miscellaneous subcategory. I agree, but simultaneously know that you don't have to reach too far in most circumstances in order to make an allowance for something that might be a little bit more binary. Like for example, I realized as I was reading the list I gave you that I had what seemed like a supercategory Drinks and then a subcategory Alcoholic. In the structure that I've got, you wouldn't need to put the stuff that was only in the Drinks category into a miscellaneous folder because the obvious dichotomy is Alcoholic and Non-Alcoholic. So I appreciate your attempt to avoid any kind of miscellaneous folder, but I won't think it's wrong if you use the categorical context to create a folder that contextually equates to something like Standard or Normal or something like that. Okay, looking at your 14 parents suggestion, I would argue... hmm. Okay, I thought I had an immediate comment about dessert type, but I realized that that might be one of the rare occasions where a third category actually would be valid. This is why I allowed for the possibility. I wasn't able to come up with on the fly why it might be necessary to have a tertiary category. But here we go, because I'm looking at salads as well and realizing that a generic description of the necessity for a tertiary category would be that they are references to grouping methods which, outside of that context, could simultaneously be detected and have nothing to do with my with my cooking decision. Like, if I attempted to introduce a category or subcategory that included frozen things, it would cover the the dessert that is served frozen, but would have no use outside of describing the dessert. Or, with the salads, I've already got categories for each plant type, I believe, but there's no situation in which marking a thing mixed in a way that would clarify the salad situation. There's no way of defining it that wouldn't include so many other ingredient combination dishes that it became almost a joke category. Although, okay, so what we're going to say is that desserts and salads both get put in as subcategories for the meal roll, but they both get tertiary categories. Either Meal Roll or Dish Format. I just realized I might be equivocating there. But either way, they are categories that get tertiary categories in terms of the entire tree. All right, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming that Meal Roll is talking about breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch, anytime, snacks, etc. While Dish Format is whether it's a main dish, a side dish, or still a snack, which explains why you have it as a primary category. Perhaps there's a redundant overlap there. I might need to think about that one a bit. Okay, you already went into it. All right. Okay, let's talk about the ones where you've nailed it down first, as I go through this. The cuisine and region, relatively simple and easy. The base assumption as you go through any given recipe is that... Okay, I'm thinking that every primary category should elicit a response or answer from every recipe. I might have to clarify or refine that, or even abandon it for a different approach. But the point is that I think that every primary category, when you look at a recipe, it should be entered in at least one subcategory of that category. But in terms of cuisine and region, or other categories that I approve explicitly, sometimes that answer will be unknown or, you know, basic American fusion, at which point it wouldn't need to be included in cuisine. So, at least under the paradigm that I'm starting to define, where every supercategory or primary category, or however you want to define it verbally, should be able to place every recipe in terms of an answer. But with cuisine and region, recipe in terms of an answer. But with cuisine and region, it's allowable not to include a particular recipe if its region is uncertain or unspecified. That is to say, or if it is at heart just American. Like, if it's some sort of explicit Finnish-Korean fusion dish, then it would go appropriately like Asian and Scandinavian or something like that. But if it's something like a, let's say, a catfish taco, unless something about the information you might find online is explicit otherwise, it's just American and it doesn't require a subcategory entry. In cooking method, that's another definite item, and you've got the right idea. But what I would include for the oven would be the use of a stove top. And then, if either overtly from the nature of the recipe name and how things are generally made like a pie or something, is baked in an oven, unless it's a special case. Hmm. I was going somewhere with that, but I lost it. I think what I was trying to say is that number three is the kind of thing where you can fill in one or more of these subcategories fairly easily just from the nature of things without looking it up. I don't need you to get exhaustive about it just to make sure that you include any information that you come across. So like with the example of the pie I was talking about, if the rest of the categorization in this section or anywhere else is easy and you don't need to look anything up, you can just mark it off as oven. But if in the course of looking up some complexity you find out that, like, the filling requires getting pulsed in a blender, then you would mark off blender because it was information you came across. So, again, just in short, don't try and be exhaustive, but use any information that you incidentally find to make this categorization more specific or complete. And that reminds me that there needs to be at least one more entry there, or rather a modification. You need to specify blender or food processor. A lot of recipes involve some kind of chopping with a food processor and a few others a blender or food processor. It's one that I haven't gotten around to, but that should be included. One of the reasons why I'm being so specific about the parts that you've got right is because I'm not exactly sure how I want to adjust the ones that are not even wrong, but kind of bleeding into each other. Meal, Roll, Dish Format, and Ingredient Focus are easy to identify as separate things, but when you start trying to define what those things are, case by case, it starts to seem a little bit more. Fluid, particularly between the Dish Format and the Ingredient Focus. So let me go through what you've got here for four and five and see if I can start to find a pattern. Okay, dish format isn't as... bad as I thought. Most of the stuff in here is okay, although I would expand pizza to include flatbreads. Before you started applying it, I would ask you to tell me what you think the difference is between dips and jams and sauces. I haven't got a solid definition in my head, but I know that there is a difference, and I'd like to see what kind of differentiation you'll be applying. Number five is seemingly complete. I think that my concern earlier was misdirected but still present and I'm starting to see where that lies because it may seem like an overlap but bread and grains are actually both, for my purposes, ingredients. But bread is also a dish format separate from the flatbreads thing I was talking about. If I had to choose, I would actually put it in dish format. That may be the best way to go because then there would be an entry for dish format and ingredient focus for, say, a challah bread. Although, at that point, it might be better to introduce flour as an ingredient so it distinguishes from actual whole grains like rice, which I think is the reason why I had that particular ingredient there in the first place. Okay, we've already touched on dessert and transforming it into a subcategory with tertiary categories, and the same with salads. Although, I'll admit that with the salads... the problem I'm having is that chicken salad and Caesar salad use the same words, and, in concept, touch on the same thing enough that separating them becomes a gooey mess. And then, of course, there's fruit salads, which, depending on situation, can be either a side or a dessert, or the side of a dessert. Although, let's not worry about that last one too much at the moment. I don't think there's a workaround that also captures the specific nature without becoming too inclusive of things and creating a category with no application except as useful when combined with the dessert subcategory or a salad cup subcategory. And we can't, again, because of the nature of salads, we can't just say we'll call it a salad and then mark off every ingredient, because often what I would be looking for wouldn't necessarily be a like broccoli salad. I would be looking for something which is interesting almost because it's a blend that I wouldn't look for in terms of individual ingredients. Okay, number nine just needs to become beverages. I'm not sure what the subcategories would be outside of alcoholic, but I'm sure you can help me come up with a few things so it isn't simply alcoholic or non-alcoholic. For example, a milkshake is a beverage, but it's a lot different from a non-alcoholic punch. But to avoid redundancy, I'd like to make it so that the categories aren't repetitive. So I don't want to just have a subcategory of drinks or beverages be dessert. Let's say for the moment that snacks goes under meal roll, because again, being in one subcategory does not preclude its inclusion in other ones. So something can be an appetizer and a snack. Thinking about it in those terms, for meal roll, we have main dish and side dish. Another addition that would capture the spirit of most sandwiches, but not all, would be something like light meal, as opposed to main dish, which implies preparation for multiple people or side dish, which does the same. Now there could be light meals that were prepared for multiple people, so it's more of a question of the spirit of the recipe than the actual nature of it, but you could say that about pretty much any of those meal roll things. Scale in context is like cuisine in that there can be a default category in terms of trying to make sure all of these supercategories have an answer and that if that default answer, which is, you know, probably somewhere between four and eight people, is met, then it doesn't have to explicitly be entered into this category at all. I think it needs a little bit more direct massaging in terms of what's already there than the other categories where we're worrying about either specifics or making sure that we've got everything. Because, like, large batch and family gatherings do overlap but aren't necessarily the same thing. Personal, I don't think that was actually an entry. It might be a transcriber issue because I do notice that you're missing seasonal, which would still be appropriate under scale and context. I don't remember entering four people either. I'm not sure what that would be. But even just those three ideas, large batch, family gathering, and seasonal, are enough to be included as categories, even if most of the recipes will not have an entry there. Because the items that do have entries there will be particularly necessary in those contexts. I think exotic equipment can be moved up to the dish, not the dish format, the cooking method section. That might, looking back at it, even have been how I intended it to be used. It's just that the program I'm using has not complicated but involved enough methods of rearranging the order of categories that I just never got reminded to get around to it after using it once or twice so far. So that would be for pretty much anything that doesn't fall into one of the other preparation categories as well as any equipment. Okay, I might have just repeated myself. Basically, any equipment that is specifically necessary for preparation but doesn't fall into the other cooking method items. For example, a ravioli press. Now, in absolute terms, that might not qualify as exotic, but in terms of finding the right equipment that is absolutely required for a dish, it certainly is exotic. And let's move intentionally spicy into scale and context because that one exists because of my mother's palate considerations. There are a... she cannot handle anything that is extremely spicy due to both taste buds and digestion. So there are a lot of recipes where I scale things back, but there are some where doing that essentially recreates a different, simple item. Like, I think I was looking at trying to create a different kind of chicken soup recently, but in trying to accommodate her, it basically all boiled down to a simple chicken soup with minor, you know, like light flavoring differentiations because she can't handle cilantro either. So if I wanted to try and make a... what was originally some sort of spicy chicken mole stew, once I accounted for what she could handle, it would have just been your average American chicken stew. So this category is also contextual, and I would appreciate some help with it, although I don't intend you to be as accurate as you are with the other more, you know, easily defined, socially items. This would basically be anything where spice, particularly heat, and or cilantro, play a significant, enough role in the flavoring of a dish. Spice, particularly heat, and or cilantro, play a significant enough role that taking it out wouldn't just blunt the dish, it would have it transform back into a different recipe entirely. As opposed to, say, when I tried making borscht, I had to cut back on the paprika because she can detect that too. It doesn't mean that I didn't use paprika, and even if I had eliminated it entirely, it still would have been a form of borscht. It just wouldn't have been quite the same. Okay, let me look through these specific things you've got. Let's see, I don't disagree, just don't disagree. We talked about bread, we expanded pizza so that it functions better as a dish format. Okay, what I want you to do now is, first, in one of those copy boxes that you've got, I'd like you to try and update what you're suggesting in terms of category and subcategory based on what I've said. That way, if I have to walk away, I can copy and paste that back so we can pick up where we left off, and I can review what you think of I've asked you to do in terms of shuffling around categories. Then, ask any questions that the shuffling has done. Once you've done that, I will likely be asking you to to make suggestions that could round out any potentially Foreseeable anomalies in terms of making the categories more complete, like any ingredient that is likely to pop up and isn't covered by at least one of the already existing categories.

M: Okay, so. The entire categories of dessert and salads, I said, should be moved into meal rule. They are the exception to the two-category rule. They are allowed to have three categories. Cuisine and region, there should be no unknown or default subcategory. The cuisine and region category is allowed to have no entry. Dessert and food processor are a single subcategory. Remove non-alcoholic and other beverage as subcategories. They will be combined into a single subcategory of basic. Other than that, I see no alterations that are necessary at this point. I believe that the moving of the desserts and salads into meal roll will fix that. Okay, I'm glad that you brought it up. Move beverages into meal roll as well, but maintain the subcategories of that. That is the third exception to the two-category rule. with ingredient focus. Definitely include the primary ones. Yeah, it looks like from your examples, that is the method you should follow. Do not limit yourself because if nothing else, it will be useful in situations where I might be making something for someone with allergies. But do not try and take it down to include things like the spice or something like that. Like, don't worry... Okay, that actually brought up a new ingredient subcategory idea. Don't worry about whether or not it includes small amounts of things like... How would I put it? The paprika I mentioned, or other dried spices. But create a subcategory separate from vegetables for things like cilantro and parsley. That aren't quite the same as fruits or vegetables, but add flavor and are bought in bunches and used for purposes beyond just garnish. I'm not exactly sure what to call it. I'm open to suggestions. Also, for ingredients. Earlier, I had a rule defined for some other category or involving going online where I was telling you not to try and be exhaustive, but use the information you gathered or that you knew was involved just from what it is. I'd like you to do that when you're trying to apply categories involving ingredients as well. As an example, if one of the recipes is grilled cheese, as in a grilled cheese sandwich, I know that I wouldn't even need to look that up in terms of categorizing. And so, while a particular version of that might use, for example, butter or margarine as a frying medium, or might suggest adding a tomato, if you don't need to look it up, you won't know that. And so, at that point, you can just use the logical categories like the cooking method would be stovetop, and under ingredients it would be bread and cheese. Okay, I'm glad I went through this because it sounds like we're going to need two different subcategories of bread. One as a bread, and one as a cheese sandwich. So, I'm going to go ahead and make a cheese sandwich. Because it sounds like we're going to need two different subcategories of bread. One as a dish format, and one as an ingredient. I just realized that bread might come up often enough that it needs to have two entries. It's just that there are two separate definitions, depending on what category you're talking about. If it's dish format, it comes into play when you're making a loaf. If it's an ingredient, it's when you are including pre-baked bread. Whether it's as slices, or pulsing it for breadcrumbs, or slicing it for croutons, or whatever. Anyway, getting back to the original topic, at that point you can determine that the ingredients are bread and cheese without having to go online. But once you've got a reason to go online anyway, and any information you get about the major ingredients should be just used to check off the ingredient list in passing, since the information is already there. Also, as you're doing that, only include an ingredient if it is literally included as an ingredient rather than as part of a process, like the example I gave with the grilled cheese. If you end up having to look it up anyway, and you find out that it includes butter as an ingredient, but that butter is only used to spread for frying, that is not enough to count it as including cheese slash dairy. Or if the recipe mentions parsley, but only as a garnish, then that wouldn't be the same as if the parsley was actually chopped up and mixed into whatever the dish was. So, along with the guidance that I just gave, yes, assign all the major players. For mixed salads and fruit salads, be certain to include them as a mixed salad. In fact, let's add a third salad category. We've got green salads, mixed salads like chicken salad or ham salad, and fruit salad. If the salad involves both fruit and greens, then it qualifies for both. If it's a mixed salad, though, don't worry about indicating inclusion of vegetables by marking it off as green, at least not in your pass. If I use this to build on, I will perhaps start being more explicit in the really unique cases, but most mixed salads involve starting with chopped proteins and mixing in a bunch of stuff. Usually in relatively minimal amounts, so it's not quite the same scenario, even if it does include a little bit of greens or vegetables or fruits. But as far as including them as desserts, use context in your best judgment, but it's not necessary if you don't see a reason to include it as a dessert. As a side, though, it definitely is a side. I would say that most salads are either a main or a side as well. If it's not either of those, it likely is a form of sandwich or ingredient. Like I've seen an actual chicken salad as in it was the mixed salad served on lettuce as a side dish, but I don't think I've ever seen ham salad as anything but a sandwich. And there may be recipes where the chicken salad is defined, but how it's served is not clear, at which point it becomes an ingredient. I think I already answered number four, but just to repeat myself. Unknown default should be eliminated from Cuisine. It is one of, I believe, two categories, the other one being scale and context, where it is an exemption to the paradigm rule that there be an entry. Because it is one of the categories where there can actually be a default or assumption made. Like meal roll has to be able to have at least one entry. And as I'm saying that, it may be necessary to move or duplicate the ingredient base into meal roll, but with a different definition. In terms of how it's used in meal roll, ingredient would specify something like a sauce or a dip or some other ingredient, like what I was just talking about with a chicken salad mixture, where its actual use is uncertain. Because by its nature, it has to be applied to something else, whether it's filling a roll in a recipe or going on top of a pasta or something like that. For number five, that is pretty much what I intended, and I'm glad you caught on. It is a... I don't want to say it should be a greedy catalog... category. But... But... It can incorporate pretty much everything except for... By the way you defined the question, you seem to have the basic concept. The only refinement I would make on what you were looking at is that the lavish wraps would fall into that kind of sandwich category, which I believe I left open. And something like a tortilla would be considered a bread. You could think of this as a not a greedy but a welcoming category. Like if it involves a dough and baking but doesn't seem to have a home in any of the other more specifically defined categories, then its welcoming category is this pizza and flatbread one. For number six, in order to be clear, I just said that the meal rule category requires an ingredient subcategory so that there is an appropriate place to put anything whose dish format might not have otherwise had a home like the sauces or the jams. So to be clear, what I'm talking about right now is the dish format version. And it looks like you have the concept fairly correct on this one as well. Again, like with the pizza and flatbread category, I would define this one as welcoming in that if it does not look like it has an appropriate dish format otherwise, you seem to have a good enough comprehension or way of examining things that you can put it in as an ingredient base, like all of the examples that you suggested are are appropriate for the ingredient base subcategory of dish formats. With the overarching theme being anything that is not intended to be consumed on its own, but rather incorporated into another recipe, which if you need me to be explicit, would be more distinct from, would be distinct from sauces or dips or jams, in that those more involve application after a recipe has been completed, or explicitly stored once the recipe is done with the intention of putting it onto whatever might fit the user's fancy. Okay, quickly, because it looks like my last version of this dropped. For number seven, yes, intentionally spicy should include cilantro in its consideration. It may not be correct in terms of definition, but this is more of a unofficial title than actual definition. This is everything that if I modify it in order to accommodate my mother, it downgrades to a more simple and likely duplicate of another recipe, as opposed to the ones where it still is explicitly different from a simplified version of itself because of the included ingredients. Like in the example I gave with the soup, what I finally ended up making included, I can't remember what it was, and I don't know if I remember how to pronounce it, but some form of South American starch similar to a potato that produced a unique flavor despite not being able to use cilantro or spice. Number eight, yes, desserts are also milkshakes. With the differentiation between a simply sweet drink, like a punch, and an actual dessert, I ask only that you be consistent in your application of the methodology by which you draw the distinction. You don't even have to tell me what that is. I may ask you after the fact, but I won't expect you to necessarily be able to tell me because I know that the tokens that you use might have shoved the exact methodology you use out of your memory. Just make sure that whatever method you use in any given pass at this task, that it maintains some form of consistency, and that's not just with the desserts and beverages thing. I mean that for everything like the flatbread choices or whether something is a main dish or a side dish. As long as you consistently apply your rules, if I have any issues with it, I will be able to adjust it myself as long as it's consistent. Okay, my intention is before sending you at the entirety of the spreadsheet, I'm going to ask you to try a perhaps 25 row sample. I don't want you to start at that, I just am telling you so that you know where we're going with this. What I'd like you to do right now is first process my comments and guidance in terms of what I want you to do from this message. Then give me a code block that contains your current understanding of the categories that you'll be using. Last time the code block came first and I think you gave it to me before processing the changes so they look different. If the category and subcategory structure look incorrect, we'll work on that. If it looks fine, I will then ask you if there's any type of expansion required in order to make sure that the categories which require a particular entry are not complete enough to handle any option. And then, not in the next message, but as a sub-target or sub-goal, we will proceed to try and do that test run. Be sure to ask any questions that might come from attempting to appropriately reconstruct the categories and subcategories.

M: Okay, this is what I was kind of afraid of, and maybe expecting a little. You've over-applied things instead of simply modifying. Meal Role is either Main Dish, Side Dish, Breakfast, Appetizer, Snack, Light Meal, Component, Dessert, Salad, or Beverage. There is no Basic. The Dessert subcategories are Frozen, Baked, or Otherwise. The Salad subcategories are Green, Mixed, or Fruit. The Beverage subcategories are Alcoholic, Basic, Milkshake, or Punch. I'm going to review what the transcriber put in to try and make sure that that's precise. But if any kind of punctuation error escapes my notice, the point is that there should be no basic category under Meal Roll. We're going to change the name of the Dish Format subcategory Ingredient Base into just Ingredient. It still is distinct from the Meal Roll subcategory that we're calling Component. To avoid equivocation, we're going to change the category name of IngredientFocus to RecipeFocus. Not perfect, but at very least an explicitly different token name. The transcriber, by the way, shrunk or removed the space in the term recipe focus. Please fix that. I'm walking around, so typing is not my current strong suit. We're going to change the subcategory you have as bread ingredient to prepared bread. Not much of an improvement in terms of length, but the parentheses would make things clunky, and JSON is already volatile enough in terms of reading without including parentheses. Change the subcategory Fresh Herbs to Herbs slash flavoring, and in practice, consider it the welcoming category of the recipe focus categories, or rather the welcoming subcategory of the recipe focus categories. That is, explicitly it should include the smaller ingredients, such as cilantro or parsley, that provide a particular flavor, but that do so at a volume beyond that used for dried spices. But in practice, it also can include items that are used in a larger quantity, but that have somehow excluded themselves from the other available subcategories. Technically, that's not even inaccurate, because rarely will there be anything included in a recipe that does not have anything to do with the flavor. So relabel meat.nonstandard as nonstandard meat. The minor name adjustments are just to maintain a kind of uniformity. Part of that is meaninglessly aesthetic, but another part is that a single inconsistent label is going to get an inordinate amount of attention, rather than being part of the entire group, at least from the human perspective. And to clarify, in everything except for... Hold on. In every category except for Cuisine slash Region and Scale and Context, every recipe should fit at least one subcategory of every category, but it also can meet multiple subcategories in that category. In the case of desserts, beverages, or salads, fitting at least one of the tertiary categories counts as fitting into a subcategory and meets the minimal requirements. But for example, a recipe can be a dessert and a beverage. A recipe can be a mixed salad and a side dish. It is not an exclusivity requirement, only that there is a minimum of one outside of the two explicitly excluded categories. So RecipeFocus can have as many primary ingredients checked off as it wants. The dish format can somehow be both pasta and a sandwich, if the recipe indicates it should be. And in theory, the preparation method could qualify for every preparation method, from grill to oven to exotic equipment. I just realized, having said that, cooking method needs one more subcategory. Handmade. Not often, but more than I likely would predict. Preparation doesn't require anything except cutting up or otherwise disassembling the ingredients appropriately and then putting them together again in a bowl. That would be the handmade category in cooking method. Okay, please process these updates and then display for me in a code box the category structure as you understand it after that processing.

M: I don't know why this is so difficult, but here it is explicitly. It probably is not structurally correct in terms of brackets, but I'm hoping you'll understand how you're getting the basic concept wrong.

"Meal Role": { "Main Dish", "Side Dish", "Breakfast", "Appetizer", "Snack", "Light Meal", "Component", "Dessert": [ "Frozen", "Baked", "Otherwise" ], "Salad": [ "Green", "Mixed", "Fruit" ], "Beverage": [ "Alcoholic", "Single Serving",
"Punch" ] }

… Everything else you seem to have the concept down, but you keep screwing up that meal roll thing. I know I likely don't have the structure exactly right, because that was more of a Frankenstein cut and paste than an actual typing down in an appropriate coding environment. But that is what I was expecting from you, and what I want you to use, once you've made sure that the structure is syntactically correct. And as I was doing that, I did, in fact, change the structure of beverages. It should be self-explanatory. An explicit category for milkshakes or things like that wasn't necessary. So I fixed that as well. Please process this, and then give me a new readout of how you understand the categories, subcategories, and tertiary categories to be used.

M: Okay, that looks conceptually like what I wanted. I don't have a complete understanding of the JSON structure, so I trust you, but I do have the question. Are the empty brackets necessary after each entry because of the other entries, the desserts and such containing information in theirs, or is that just a completeness thing that you included which is not technically required? Other than that, the structure looks fine, and I appreciate that you placed it in that in case I have to walk away from GPT for a while and come back. That way I don't have to cut and paste around the other forms you were giving me to cut out the various bits. I know that you say that you can work around them, but I always feel like that's both laziness and that if I take that as being completely true that something about things will add a different spin and take things different ways than I could have prevented. I think that this version is, if not the idealized platonic version for this task, I think it's informationally complete enough to handle any recipe thrown at it. Looking at the list and the rules you'll be using to place them, are you able to see situation in which one of the primary categories could occur without, or one of the primary categories would not be able to be completed by that hypothetical recipe?

M: Yeah, with Meal Roll, you have the right way of dealing with anything that... ...might somehow escape classification, even as broad as we've defined it. I mentioned earlier that we were going to need a problematic category. Instead, it looks like that would be by the way that we've defined things, also placed under component. So if somehow, in the course of investigation and thinking about it, you end up with a ham sandwich that defies classification, stick it under component... ...and I'll know that it's included there, not because it actually is a component, but because a ham sandwich listed as a component indicates something about it went haywire or screwy. Cooking method, I wasn't worried about. Once I realized that we needed a handmade category, that pretty much put an endcap on something that was otherwise missing something. Anything that doesn't require equipment goes in handmade. Anything that requires equipment not listed goes under the exotic equipment. So that seems to be fairly complete by any standards. Yeah. Dish format is kind of like meal roll, in that anything that defies categorization can go under ingredient. Again, if I see a ham sandwich listed as an ingredient, obviously something went wrong, and I need to take a look at the recipe itself. I was also primarily concerned about the recipe-focused category. You came up with examples that I didn't, but fortunately the herbs and flavoring does seem to be explicitly appropriate as well as available for the welcoming element of the category. If there is any category-defying ingredient in any of the recipes that does not easily go into the herbs-flavoring thing, I'm going to explicitly tell you. In that circumstance, like a divide-by-cheese-error type of situation that neither of us is foreseeing, in that circumstance, place it under non-standard meat. Like in the previous situations under dish method and meal rule, if I see something under that category that obviously should not be there, I'll know that something about that recipe was quirky enough that even the robust handling that we're defining would not be able to handle it. And I should look at it personally, just to make sure that in looking it up you didn't accidentally end up in one of those situations where you get redirected to a porno site and you are trying to somehow parse the idea of a threesome into a recipe. Okay, so I'm going to turn on the research mode, but I don't want you to process the entire project file that I uploaded. Only the first 50 entries. I want you to give me, from those first 50 entries, an example of the processing that you will do on the entire file once we've debugged everything, or if everything works once we've tested it. I want the output to be a downloadable text file containing the results of your processing those lines according to the rules I have given you in this silo. Before we start that, please repeat to me what you want to do, or rather, what it is I want you to do once I turn the research mode on, in a way that I can copy and paste if everything is correct. I'm asking you to do it this way because I want to make sure that you remember the instructions I gave you, like, an hour or two ago, so that I don't end up repeating myself or even contradicting myself in trying to be explicit.

M: Please do that one more time again so that I can copy-paste it into the research mode message, only taking into account two things. One, specify explicitly that multiple categories are allowed if applicable, and that one subcategory is the minimum, not the maximum. Also, need to make sure that you include that the results are intended primarily for your use, not mine, and so the output should be formatted to optimize your usage of it, not mine.

M: COPY–PASTE VERSION (FINAL)

You want the assistant to: 1. Open the file Recipes from Book.ods and read the sheet DailyWeekly2. 2. Process ONLY the first 50 entries of that sheet (column 3 = recipe name, column 6 = recipe source). 3. For each of the first 50 recipes, the assistant must: • Use column 3 to identify the recipe. • Use column 6 whenever needed or useful for online lookup. • Perform online research as needed to understand the recipe’s identity, preparation, and major ingredients. • Apply all category rules defined in this silo, including: • Meal Role (with Dessert/Salad/Beverage tertiary rules) • Cuisine/Region (optional) • Cooking Method (including Handmade and Exotic Equipment) • Dish Format (including Ingredient) • Recipe Focus (including Herbs/Flavoring, Prepared Bread, Nonstandard Meat fallback, etc.) • Scale & Context (optional) 4. Category assignment rules: • Multiple categories and multiple subcategories are allowed whenever applicable. • Each mandatory category must have AT LEAST one subcategory assigned, not at most. • If a recipe defies classification, assign its Meal Role as Component to signal that something about the recipe is structurally problematic. • If an ingredient defies Recipe Focus classification, place it under Nonstandard Meat as the emergency fallback. 5. Generate a downloadable text file containing the processed results for the first 50 recipes. • The file must be flat text. • The internal structure must be optimized for the assistant’s future use, not for the user’s reading convenience. • It must contain all category assignments exactly as per the rules in this silo. • This file will serve as the template for processing the entire dataset later. 6. This is a test run only, to confirm the categorization system functions correctly before processing the full file.

M: Start, then, please