recipe.exchange lexicons

Your recipes don't live inside Buttery. They live on the open AT Protocol network, in your own account, as portable records under the recipe.exchange namespace. Buttery reads and writes those records — but so can any other app that speaks the same lexicons. Leave Buttery whenever you like and your recipes come with you.

This page is the reference for those record types: what fields exist, what they mean, and — the part worth reading twice — where the published schema and the data you'll actually see on the network diverge.

About this reference

Namespace	exchange.recipe.*
Published by	did:plc:4cx7ts7lqgjtsfquo53qo3sz
Discover it	the _lexicon.recipe.exchange DNS TXT record resolves the publisher
Reflects the schema as of	2026-08-01

recipe.exchange is an open, third-party lexicon — Buttery didn't author it and doesn't own it. The tables below describe the schema as published on the network on the date above. Lexicons evolve, so treat this as a snapshot; the network is always the source of truth.

The record types

Lexicon	Kind	One per…	Read by Buttery today
exchange.recipe.recipe	record	recipe	Yes
exchange.recipe.collection	record	collection	Not yet
exchange.recipe.profile	record	account	Not yet
exchange.recipe.defs	shared definitions	—	Indirectly

Three of these are records that live in your account; the fourth is a shared vocabulary the records draw on. Buttery reads recipes today — collections and profiles are part of the schema and coming later.

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exchange.recipe.recipe

A single recipe. One record per recipe.

Always present: name, text, ingredients, instructions, createdAt, updatedAt.

Field	Type	Required	What it holds
name	string	Yes	Recipe name, up to 255 characters.
text	string	Yes	Description, up to 3000 characters.
ingredients	string[]	Yes	Each item up to 500 characters.
instructions	string[]	Yes	Step-by-step, each step up to 1000 characters.
createdAt	datetime	Yes	ISO-8601 timestamp.
updatedAt	datetime	Yes	ISO-8601 timestamp.
embed	#imagesEmbed		Up to 4 photos.
keywords	string[]		Free-form tags, each up to 64 characters.
cookTime	string		ISO-8601 duration, e.g. "PT30M" (see wire notes).
prepTime	string		ISO-8601 duration.
totalTime	string		ISO-8601 duration.
recipeYield	string		Servings or yield, free text (e.g. "4 servings").
nutrition	#nutrition		Per-serving nutrition.
attribution	one of attribution		Where the recipe came from.
cookingMethod	string		An open enum — see cookingMethod*.
recipeCuisine	string		An open enum — see cuisine*.
recipeCategory	string		An open enum — see category*.
suitableForDiet	string[]		Open enum values — see diet*.

Nested shapes

#nutrition

Per-serving nutrition. All fields optional:

Field	Type	Notes
calories	integer	A whole number.
fatContent	string	A decimal carried as text, e.g. "5.0".
proteinContent	string	Decimal as text.
carbohydrateContent	string	Decimal as text.

#image

What you send when adding a photo:

Field	Type	Required	Notes
image	blob	Yes	Any image/*, up to 1 MB.
alt	string	Yes	Alt text, for accessibility.
aspectRatio	app.bsky.embed.defs#aspectRatio		A shared atproto shape.

#imagesEmbed

A set of up to 4 #image uploads — this is what recipe.embed holds.

#viewImage / #view

The hydrated form the network hands back when you read a recipe: each photo comes as a thumb and fullsize URL (served from a CDN) plus alt text and an optional aspect ratio. Worth noting the asymmetry — you upload photos as blobs (#image); you read them back as URLs.

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exchange.recipe.collection

A named, ordered list of recipes. One record per collection.

Always present: name, createdAt, updatedAt.

Field	Type	Required	What it holds
name	string	Yes	Up to 100 characters.
createdAt	datetime	Yes	ISO-8601 timestamp.
updatedAt	datetime	Yes	ISO-8601 timestamp.
text	string		Description, up to 1000 characters.
recipes	strongRef[]		References (uri + cid) to recipe records.

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exchange.recipe.profile

Public profile for a recipe.exchange account. One per account (record key self).

Always present: createdAt, profileType.

Field	Type	Required	What it holds
profileType	string	Yes	profileType* — personal or business.
createdAt	datetime	Yes	ISO-8601 timestamp.
updatedAt	datetime		ISO-8601 timestamp.
about	string		Bio, up to 2000 characters.
email	string		Up to 255 characters.
phone	string		Up to 20 characters.
links	#link[]		Up to 5 links.
address	#address		Postal address.
businessType	string		businessType* — for business profiles.

#link

title (up to 100 chars) and url — both required.

#address

Optional city, state, country, street1, street2, postalCode, plus latitude / longitude carried as text (see network notes — the exact encoding is unconfirmed, since no live profiles exist yet).

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exchange.recipe.defs

The shared vocabulary the records above draw on: open enums (tokens) and the attribution shapes.

Tokens

These are open enums — a record may carry a value outside the published list, so treat unknown values gracefully:

Group	Prefix	Roughly	Used by
Cuisines	cuisine*	45 values	recipe.recipeCuisine
Categories	category*	20 values	recipe.recipeCategory
Cooking methods	cookingMethod*	13 values	recipe.cookingMethod
Diets	diet*	14 values	recipe.suitableForDiet
Licenses	license*	6 values	attribution
Business types	businessType*	21 values	profile.businessType
Profile types	profileType*	2 values	profile.profileType
Publication types	publicationType*	2 values	attribution

Attribution

A recipe's attribution is exactly one of these six shapes, describing where it came from:

Shape	Required	For
#attributionOriginal	license	Your own original recipe (with a license*).
#attributionPerson	name	Something a person shared (family, a friend).
#attributionWebsite	name, url	A website or blog.
#attributionPublication	title, author	A book or magazine (plus isbn, page, publisher).
#attributionShow	title, network	A TV or streaming show (plus airDate, episode).
#attributionProduct	brand, name	A product package or label (plus upc).

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The schema vs. the network

The single most useful thing to know if you're reading this data yourself: the published schema and the bytes on the wire don't always agree. A few of these gaps exist because the schema predates today's stricter Lexicon validators. Here's what to actually expect:

• Durations are text. cookTime, prepTime, and totalTime are ISO-8601 durations ("PT30M"), but they travel as plain strings — parse them yourself.
• Decimals are text. Every non-whole number rides the wire as a string: nutrition macros ("5.0") and profile latitude/longitude. calories is the only genuine integer.
• Photos go out as blobs, come back as URLs. You upload an #image blob; a read gives you #viewImage CDN URLs (thumb + fullsize).
• A handful of fields are looser than they look. Some fields the schema once marked as an email, a date, or a numeric type are, on the network, just strings. Validate defensively.
• Open enums stay open. Cuisine, category, cooking method, and diet values can legitimately be things not in the published token list. Don't reject a recipe for using one.

How Buttery reads your recipes

Buttery reads your exchange.recipe.recipe records straight from your account's public data — no special access, nothing you have to grant. When it shows a recipe, it validates it against the schema above and reads photos from the URLs the network provides. Because the records are public and portable, the same recipes are readable by any recipe.exchange-aware app — Buttery is just one door into a database you own.

A living document. This reference reflects the recipe.exchange schema as of 2026-08-01. Open lexicons change over time; if something here disagrees with what you see on the network, the network wins.