House rules

PREP Terms of Use · last updated 1 October 2026

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PREP is a free cooking app: recipes with real timings, a plan that runs steps in parallel, a cooking journal and, if you want it, a weekly leaderboard with a showcase of dishes. These are the rules for using it. They are written to be read, not to be long.

In short: the app is yours, free, with no ads. The leaderboard is optional and for people aged 16 and over. What you publish (dish photos, name, username, comments) is seen by others, and it must be food, yours, and respectful. Anyone who harasses, insults or posts content that doesn’t belong is removed: zero tolerance. If we take something of yours down we tell you: a blocked comment shows you a note, and if we close your profile we write to you with the reason, and you can reply. You can report, hide and delete your account from the app, whenever you want.

Who we are

PREP is made by Francesco Palumbo, an individual, in Italy. For any question: preprecipe@gmail.com.

What you can do with the app

Use it to cook, at home, as often as you like. Recipes, timings, calories and allergens are indications: timings change with the stove and the hands, calories are estimates, and for allergens the label of what you buy prevails over our list. If you have an allergy, always check yourself.

The AI Chef answers the pantry you type by suggesting dishes from our catalogue. It is a helper, not an adviser: what you cook is your decision.

The leaderboard and your profile

Your profile is born when you first open the app, and it asks for your first and last name, an email (to get back in if you change phones), a username, and being at least 16 years old. If your profile is public, the leaderboard shows your first and last name; if it is private, your username.

With a public profile, others see your username, the dish photos you publish, and how many cooks you did in the week. You can leave the leaderboard, switch off your name, or delete your account from the app, in your profile, at any time: your published photos are removed. Your profile photo, or your character, can be seen by anyone, even if your profile is private.

With a profile you can like and comment on other people’s postcards, and they can do the same under yours. Under a postcard of yours you are in charge of the comments: you can delete them. And you can withdraw a postcard of yours whenever you want, from the post: it disappears for everyone, with its likes and comments.

Cooking together

You can invite another profile to cook the same recipe with you, each on their own phone. Whoever opens the cooking runs it: they can change the servings, finish it, and remove the other person; whoever was invited can leave at any time.

Only one of you publishes the postcard — the person who opened the cooking — and the cooking counts on the leaderboard for both. The person who was invited has to have done their share, though: at least two steps of their own, finished, of at least a minute each. Up to three shared cookings a week count per profile. This is not a way to hand each other cookings, and we notice.

To let the two phones talk, the moves of that cooking pass through our server and are deleted within twenty-four hours: it is all written in the privacy notice.

What you publish

The photos and text you publish remain yours. You give us permission to show them in the app and on PREP’s public pages for as long as they stay published, and to resize or re-encode them to do so. Nothing else: we don’t sell them and we don’t use them in advertising without asking you.

By publishing, you guarantee that:

a dish photo is yours, taken by you, and shows the dish you cooked;
your profile photo is one you have the right to use and, if it shows a person, that person is you: not someone else, a brand or a character that isn’t yours;
there are no recognisable people who haven’t given permission, and no minors, except you in your own profile photo;
it contains nothing offensive, violent, sexual, illegal, or that infringes others’ rights;
your username and name are yours and don’t impersonate anyone: neither people nor brands.
if the postcard carries the selfie of who cooked, those people have agreed to appear on PREP; if one of them changes their mind, the postcard can be taken down at any time, from the post itself (“…”, then Withdraw the postcard) or by writing to us; for a minor, whoever is responsible for them answers;
a comment is about the dish and the person who cooked it, with respect: no insults, no personal data of others (phone numbers, addresses, emails), no advertising or links to services.

Zero tolerance

We do not tolerate content or behaviour that offends, harasses, threatens or discriminates, nor, in postcards and comments, material unrelated to cooking. Photos go through an automatic check and, when in doubt, a human review before appearing in public. If something slips through, anyone can report it from the cook’s profile and hide it with one tap. We read reports as soon as we can, and we handle them ourselves. If we take down a photo, turn off a name or close an account, we write to the profile’s email: what we removed and under which rule on this page. If you think it’s a mistake, reply to that mail and we will look again. The automatic check can block a photo on its own, with nobody having seen it: write to us in that case too, and we will look at it ourselves. A cooking session under three minutes doesn’t count, and at most fourteen count in any week. Anyone cheating on the leaderboard (photos that aren’t theirs, fake cooks) is removed from the leaderboard.

Comments appear right away: an automatic filter can hold one back for review, and the first report by another person does the same; in that case only you can see it until we look at it. A blocked comment disappears for the others: you see it with a “blocked” note, and you can delete it. For a comment we normally don’t email you: the note is the reason; we write to you if we close the profile. You can report a comment with a long press, and whoever published the postcard can delete any comment under it. A comment is at most 300 characters long, and you can write one every twenty seconds, and no more than thirty in an hour.

What you must not do

use the app for purposes other than cooking and sharing dishes;
create multiple accounts, or accounts on behalf of others;
try to access other users’ data or to bypass the checks;
copy the catalogue or other people’s content in bulk to reuse it elsewhere.

What we may do

We may change the app, add or remove features, and suspend the leaderboard if needed. We may remove content and close accounts that break these rules, without notice when the breach is serious. If we change these terms substantially, we will say so in the app before the change applies.

Liability

PREP is free and provided as it is, doing our best to keep it working. We cannot guarantee it will always be available or error-free, and we are not liable for damages arising from how you use the recipes or the timings: in the kitchen, what you do and what you eat remain your responsibility. Nothing on this page limits the rights the law grants you as a consumer. Photos, selfies and comments published by users belong to whoever publishes them: we host them, check them and take them down as this page says, and we act on reports.

Law and jurisdiction

These terms are governed by Italian law. For disputes with a consumer, the courts of the consumer’s place of residence apply.

Acceptance

These rules apply to anyone who uses PREP: opening the app means accepting them. By creating the public profile and choosing a username you also accept the public part — the leaderboard, the photos, the rules on what may be published. If they don’t suit you, uninstall the app: we ask nothing else.