Task reference

Every CookDex task, with its options, is on one of the pages below. Each task is also documented in place on CookDex’s Help page. To run tasks on a schedule, see Scheduling; for what a task may change, see Safety policies.

Tasks

Task ID	Title	Purpose
`data-maintenance`	Data Maintenance Pipeline	Run staged cleanup and audit steps in order, or select a subset of stages.
`clean-recipes`	Clean Recipe Library	Remove duplicate source URLs, filter junk content, and normalize messy import names.
`slug-repair`	Repair Recipe Slugs	Detect slug/name mismatches and fix them through Direct DB when applying changes.
`ingredient-parse`	Ingredient Parser	Parse raw ingredient text into structured food, unit, and quantity fields.
`yield-normalize`	Yield Normalizer	Fill missing yield text or parse yield text into numeric servings.
`reimport-recipes`	Re-import Recipes	Re-scrape source URLs while preserving recipe identity, favorites, and organization.
`health-check`	Health Check	Run read-only recipe quality and taxonomy audits.
`recipe-dredger`	Recipe Dredger	Crawl configured recipe sites, verify recipe pages, filter by language, and import verified URLs into Mealie.
`mealie-backup`	Mealie Backup	Create a Mealie backup through the admin API and optionally prune old backups.
`cleanup-duplicates`	Clean Up Duplicates	Merge duplicate food, unit, tag, and category entries.
`tag-categorize`	Tag & Categorize Recipes	Assign categories, tags, and tools with rule matching and optional AI.
`taxonomy-refresh`	Refresh Taxonomy	Sync categories, tags, labels, and tools from CookDex config into Mealie.
`cookbook-sync`	Cookbook Sync	Create and update cookbooks from cookbook configuration rules.

In the web UI, tasks are grouped as Data Pipeline (data-maintenance, recipe-dredger, mealie-backup), Actions (clean-recipes, slug-repair, ingredient-parse, yield-normalize, cleanup-duplicates, reimport-recipes), Organizers (tag-categorize, taxonomy-refresh, cookbook-sync) and Audits (health-check).

Every task works through Mealie’s API. Some tasks can also use Direct DB, configured in Settings → Direct DB; those tasks have a use_db option to turn it on for a run.

Runtime settings

Runtime settings are managed through GET /settings and PUT /settings.

Non-secret values are stored in the app state database.
Secret values are encrypted at rest.
Task runs receive the effective runtime environment built from the settings catalog.
.env is optional and mainly useful for server overrides, pre-seeding values, or headless deployments.

Main setting groups:

Group	Examples
Connection	`MEALIE_URL`, `MEALIE_API_KEY`
AI	`CATEGORIZER_PROVIDER`, `OPENAI_API_KEY`, `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`, `OLLAMA_URL`, model settings
Dredger	`DREDGER_TARGET_LANGUAGE`, `DREDGER_CRAWL_DELAY`, `DREDGER_CACHE_EXPIRY_DAYS`
Web UI	`WEB_BIND_PORT`, `WEB_BASE_PATH`, `WEB_SESSION_TTL_SECONDS`
Direct DB	`MEALIE_DB_TYPE`, Postgres credentials, SSH tunnel settings
Runner	`MAX_RUN_DURATION_SECONDS`

Every setting is editable in Settings, which is also the complete reference: each field shows its group, default, and description. A few that are easy to miss:

Setting	Default	Purpose
`UPDATE_CHECK_ENABLED`	`true`	Check GitHub for releases on startup and about daily. Disabled means no update request. Only the app version is sent; GitHub sees the server network address. Failures show no banner.
`TAXONOMY_REFRESH_MODE`	`merge`	Default taxonomy refresh mode: `merge` keeps existing entries, `replace` matches the source exactly.
`AI_BATCH_HEARTBEAT_SECONDS`	`30`	Seconds between progress messages while an AI batch is in flight. Set `0` to disable.
`OLLAMA_REQUEST_TIMEOUT`	`300`	Seconds to wait for each Ollama request before retrying.
`OLLAMA_NUM_THREAD`	`4`	CPU threads used by Ollama generation. Raise it if the host has cores to spare.

Run history

The web UI keeps the most recent 500 runs. Older run records are pruned by a periodic housekeeping job, along with their log entries; task log files are rotated separately by the runner. Export anything you need to retain long-term before it ages out.