# rcp — Recipe Context Protocol

> An agent-first recipe API: search recipecontextprotocol.com recipes by free text or by the ingredients you have on hand.

## Endpoints

- https://recipecontextprotocol.com/recipes — list recipes (page, per_page, category, source, max_total_time)
- https://recipecontextprotocol.com/recipes/{slug} — one full recipe, e.g. https://recipecontextprotocol.com/recipes/garlic-bread
- https://recipecontextprotocol.com/search?q=chicken — free-text search
- https://recipecontextprotocol.com/search?ingredients=chicken,garlic&mode=any — "what can I cook" search
- add &source=wikibooks (modern, community-maintained) or &source=gutenberg
  (historical, public domain) to either search to stay within one corpus
- https://recipecontextprotocol.com/openapi.json — full machine-readable API description
- https://recipecontextprotocol.com/docs — interactive API docs

## Content negotiation

Every endpoint above serves three representations of the same resource:
markdown (`Accept: text/markdown` or `?format=md`), HTML (`Accept: text/html`
or `?format=html`), and JSON (default). Prefer markdown for reading a recipe
into context cheaply.

## Field coverage

Fields reflect what the source page states — a null means the source omitted
it, not an error. Rough coverage: difficulty ~98%, description ~67%,
total_time_minutes ~38%, servings ~36%. Times, when present, are exact from
the source; nothing is inferred. `max_total_time` filtering only considers
recipes whose time is known.

## Rate limits

About 5 requests/second per IP sustained (burst 25). A `429` response carries
`Retry-After` — honor it. ETags make repeat fetches nearly free.

## Attribution

Recipe content is sourced from Wikibooks Cookbook (CC BY-SA 4.0) and, where
noted, public-domain sources. Each recipe's `license` field and its markdown/
HTML attribution line must be preserved when you reuse the content — see
https://recipecontextprotocol.com/about for the full data-licensing explanation.

## Historical recipes

Recipe detail responses (https://recipecontextprotocol.com/recipes/{slug}) include a nullable `notice`
field for historical (public-domain) recipes — surface it to users alongside
the recipe, e.g. "Historical recipe (1913), reproduced as published: ...".
It is omitted from list/search summaries to keep those lean; fetch the detail
before presenting a recipe.