What we refuse

The covenant. Versioned like a protocol spec, because it is one.

v1.0 · effective 2026-08-29 · changes only ever make this list longer.

• No ads. Ever. Not display, not native, not "one tasteful sponsor." The moment a recipe page earns money per view, the recipe stops serving the cook.
• No affiliate links. If we say buy a scale, it's because you need a scale. Nobody pays us for the sentence.
• No sponsored verdicts. The Radar cannot be bought, rented, or "partnered with." A referee with a sponsor is an advertisement with a whistle.
• No life stories. The recipe starts at the top of the page. Grandma is doubtless lovely; she is not a scroll obstacle.
• No accounts, no popups, no email gates. Your recipe box lives on your device. Your attention is not a conversion funnel.
• No untested publishing. Nothing wears the tested badge without a date and a kitchen behind it. Adapted recipes say "adapted," queued retests say "retest scheduled."
• No AI-generated recipes. Tools help with everything around the cooking. The cooking is done by a human with a probe thermometer and a sink full of dishes.
• No infinite content. The box holds one canonical recipe per dish. When it's full, a recipe has to argue its way in — and something gets retired. Failures never enter; they go to the SKIP file.
• No selling out. $0 VC. Never acquired. If that ever changes, this page is the receipt you get to wave.

Every one of these is a thing an ad-funded recipe site structurally cannot promise. That's not an accident. That's the moat.