Release history

April 9, 2026

New & Improved

Guided Cooking

• Major improvements to Guided Cooking accuracy and structure.
• Increased ingredient-to-step mapping precision for more reliable step-by-step cooking.
• Improved ingredient highlighting within instructions.
• Moved timers directly into relevant steps and instruction sections for better usability.
• Enhanced overall flow to better match how users naturally cook recipes.

Cook Mode + Chat Integration

• Introduced Cook Mode within chat, tightly integrated with Guided Cooking.
• Users can now:
  • Start timers directly from chat
  • Ask questions about the current step
  • Navigate between steps (e.g. “go to step 3”)
  • Get contextual help based on where they are in the recipe
• Significantly improved contextual awareness between chat and active recipes.

Chat Improvements

• Added new chat UI cells for rendering recipes and structured content.
• Improved recipe search within chat for faster and more relevant results.
• Reduced edge-case failures and improved response consistency.

Buttons & UI

• Added new premade button types for expanded placement options.
• Improved overall UI clarity and consistency across widget surfaces.
• Fixed issues where Allspice buttons were not reliably loading on certain pages.

Publisher Controls

• Added new customization settings in the Publisher Portal.
• Expanded flexibility for controlling widget behavior and appearance.

Performance & Compatibility

• Improved stability across large publisher sites with complex layouts and heavy ad loads.
• Reduced widget load times across a variety of WordPress environments.
• Continued improvements to minimize layout shifts and script conflicts.

Fixes

• Fixed multiple edge cases in chat interactions and tool execution.
• Resolved button rendering inconsistencies across themes and page structures.
• General stability and reliability improvements across the widget runtime.

What's Coming Next

• Recipe adjustments directly within chat (servings, scaling, substitutions)
• Expanded support for in-widget advertisements and monetization controls
• Continued mobile optimizations and interaction improvements
• Improvements to Publisher Portal experience.
• Add additional button options.
• Hubbub integration

March 26, 2026

New & Improved

Chat Architecture

• Migrated chat system to a multi-node architecture to support higher concurrency and more complex interactions.
• Improved handling of multiple simultaneous user queries within a single session.
• Laid the foundation for more advanced agentic workflows and tool execution.

Guided Cooking

• Introduced voice command support to move between steps, manage timers, and more.
• Added interactive features to “full” mode like crossing out ingredients and steps.
• Added support for per-step images.
• Improvements to recipe parsing to more accurately parse ingredients that appear in multiple steps.

Personalization

• Improved storage and recall of user preferences (e.g., dietary restrictions, habits).
• Chat can now use historical context more effectively across sessions.

Agent Capabilities

• Expanded agentic capabilities for performing multi-step actions and responding more intelligently to user intent.
• Improved reliability of tool execution within chat workflows.

Platform & Infrastructure

• Improved backend orchestration for chat processing and scaling.
• Enhanced reliability of real-time interactions between chat, recipes, and user data.
• Continued work toward fully distributed, production-ready architecture.

What's Coming Next

• Deeper integration between chat and Guided Cooking
• Improved UI for chat-based interactions
• Expanded support for structured outputs (recipes, lists, actions)

March 14, 2026

New & Improved

Button Customization

• Added advanced customization options across all button types.
• Publishers can now:
  • Enable/disable specific features within each placement
  • More easily adjust layout and positioning
  • Better match site-specific styling requirements
• Improved flexibility for integrating Allspice into a wide range of themes.

Button System Expansion

• Added new button types for additional use cases and placements.
• Improved consistency across premade and custom button behaviors.

Automatic Placement

• Improved automatic placement logic for more reliable positioning within recipe pages.
• Reduced conflicts with existing page elements and layouts.

Chat Improvements

• Improved chat search functionality for faster and more accurate results.
• Reduced response times across common queries.
• Updated chat UI to support tool calls and structured outputs.

Performance & Compatibility

• Improved compatibility with diverse WordPress themes and layouts.
• Reduced styling conflicts between Allspice components and site CSS.
• Continued improvements to minimize impact on Core Web Vitals.

What's Coming Next

• Expanded button styling and layout controls
• Deeper integration between chat and on-page actions
• Continued improvements to ad compatibility and placement handling

March 2, 2026

New & Improved

Production Infrastructure

• Migrated core systems to production infrastructure.
• Improved reliability, scalability, and overall system stability.

Ad Compatibility

• Introduced foundational support for Mediavine ad placements.
• Improved ad avoidance logic to better handle sticky, floating, and video ads.
• Reduced conflicts between Allspice UI and common ad formats.

Guided Cooking (Foundation)

• Introduced the initial foundation for Guided Cooking.
• Established step-based flows and early interaction patterns for future expansion.

Recipe Detection & Parsing

• Improved recipe detection accuracy across a wider range of sites.
• Reduced false positives and improved filtering of non-recipe pages.

Mobile Optimization

• Improved mobile layout handling and interaction behavior.
• Better support for constrained screen sizes and touch interactions.

Performance & Compatibility

• Reduced widget file sizes for faster load times.
• Improved script loading behavior and overall performance.
• Fixed theme interaction issues across multiple WordPress configurations.

Fixes

• Resolved layout conflicts with certain themes and plugin combinations.
• Improved stability across different page structures and content types.

What's Coming Next

• Expanded button customization and placement controls
• Continued improvements to chat and guided cooking systems
• Additional ad compatibility enhancements

February 16, 2026

New & Improved

Email Integrations

• Publishers can now connect Mailchimp, MailerLite, and Kit to automatically add consenting users to their newsletter.
• Multiple providers can be enabled simultaneously for a single domain.
• Secure credential storage and server-to-server subscription handling.
• Destination selection (audience, group, or tag) configurable per provider.

Pico Chat v2

• Major improvements to responsiveness and conversational flow.
• Better context awareness across recipes and pantry data.
• More reliable answers and reduced hallucinations.

Shopping & Lists

• Added checkable grocery lists during shopping sessions.
• Improved syncing between grocery list and pantry updates.
• Better handling of multi-recipe ingredient aggregation.

Recipe & Parsing Improvements

• Improved recipe detection accuracy across supported sites.
• Better quantity parsing and normalization.
• More consistent ingredient handling across formats.

Overview & UI

• Added Allspice Overview Block on supported recipe pages.
• Improved action bar placement logic.
• Updated floating button positioning to reduce layout conflicts.
• Numerous UI fixes and small interaction improvements.

Performance & Compatibility

• Improved widget performance and load timing.
• Enhanced WordPress caching compatibility.
• Improved interactions with themes and optimization plugins.
• Further reductions in Core Web Vitals impact.
• Improved ad avoidance behavior around sticky and video ads.
• Reduced layout shifts and unexpected element overlap.

Platform & Infrastructure

• Backend improvements for email collection and subscription tracking.
• More reliable analytics aggregation.
• Stability improvements across the Allspice widget runtime.
• Expanded compatibility across different publisher configurations.
• Ongoing migration toward full production infrastructure.

Fixes

• Various widget UI bugs resolved.
• Improved floating button collision handling.
• More reliable action triggers from page elements.
• Multiple parsing edge-case fixes.

What's Coming Next

• Guided Cooking Mode
• New chat interface with smart suggestions
• Recipe folders and organization
• Additional monetization controls
• Expanded ad placement compatibility
• More personalization features

January 26, 2026

New & Improved

• Publishers can now more easily choose which Allspice buttons appear on recipe pages.
• Improved support for custom button triggers using provided CSS classes, allowing any site element to launch Allspice actions.
• Added widget color theme selection.
• Further optimizations to reduce potential interactions with Core Web Vitals.
• Foundation work for publisher-level toggles around Cook Mode behavior and monetization.

Partner Analytics

• More consistent aggregation of recipe-level usage data in the Partner Dashboard.
• Backend improvements to support upcoming revenue analytics and deeper audience insights.

Platform & Infrastructure

• Improved compatibility with common WordPress setups, including caching, themes, and optimization plugins.
• Improved internal validation around recipe detection to reduce false positives.

What's Coming Next

• Improve support for common ad placements
• Add ability for users to remove recipes from grocery lists
• Add shopping sessions with checkable lists
• Pico chat version 2.0
• Conversion to production environments

January 20, 2026

New & Improved

• Initial rollout of the Partner Dashboard for managing integrations and viewing high-level analytics.
• Early visibility into recipe usage and ingredient-level data.
• Better handling of JSON-LD recipe data, added backup systems.
• Improved filtering to ensure Allspice appears only on valid recipe posts (e.g., recipes with more than one ingredient).
• Smoother transitions when launching the Allspice widget from recipe pages.
• More reliable anonymous usage flow before prompting users to create an account.

Smart Features

• Backend improvements to ingredient normalization and list consolidation for smarter grocery lists.
• Continued tuning of proprietary ingredient data to reduce duplicates across recipes.
• Improved response handling and action reliability when users ask questions or perform recipe-related tasks.

Platform & Infrastructure

• Ensured Allspice scripts load only on recipe pages and after primary page content.
• Reduced risk of conflicts with ad providers and third-party scripts.
• Internal monitoring improvements in support of uptime targets.

Looking Ahead

• White-label widget controls for premium partners
• Plugin optimizations
• Theme hardening