An iPhone app from the Rack
Your session doesn't move. Your meals do. Meal timing for people who train. The day is built backward from the session.
Try it
A hand-drawn copy of the app on invented numbers, not a video. Four short parts: setting up from a blank app and having Coach fill the plates, a late morning and what it does to the afternoon, swapping lunch for a restaurant order with Coach, then the Lock Screen and History. Tap where it tells you, or let it drive.
Why it exists
My eating plan has one rule that matters more than the rest: the pre-workout meal goes in ninety minutes before the bar. Everything else in the day is built backward from that. Breakfast can slip. That meal cannot.
I went looking for an app that understood the rule, and there are three kinds to try. The meal-timer apps are alarm clocks: every three hours, no plate, no idea what to do when breakfast is late. The routine apps run one step after another, so a late morning pushes the pre-workout meal into the session, which is the one thing I was trying to prevent. The macro trackers know what I ate to the gram and have no opinion about when. Not one of them asks what time you train.
So I built the one I needed, during a meet prep, on the phone I had with me at the rack. It counts down to the next plate, re-flows the day from the time I actually ate, holds the meal that matters, and knows what is on the plate. Then it grew a kitchen, a history, a travel mode and a coach with a ceiling.
Let's be honest about what it is not. It is not a food database with a barcode scanner, and it will not try to become one. It is the timing layer those apps do not have.
The rule
Two kinds of meal. The morning meals follow on from the time you actually ate. The meals around your session stay where they are. Drag breakfast late and watch which ones move.
Gaps compress evenly toward a two-hour floor, rounded to five minutes. The pre-workout meal never moves for a late morning. Move the session itself and every meal tied to it moves with it.
What it does differently
Timing
The day is anchored to the session, not the clock.
Pre-workout, post-workout and dinner are tied to the session. Everything before them is worked out from the time you actually ate. A late morning tightens the gaps and says what moved; it never pushes the pre-workout meal into the bar.
Other apps: Alarms every N hours, or routines that roll lateness forward into the session.
Macros
Weighed from the plate, or typed. Never both.
A meal is a list of foods and quantities from your kitchen, so the numbers come from the food and editing a portion moves them. The daily target lives apart from the plan, so the editor can say "this plate puts the day 40 g of carbs over" while you are still building it.
Other apps: A food database and a total. No plan to measure the plate against.
Logging
Log at the time you ate, not the time you remembered.
The sheet opens on now with 15, 30 and 60 minutes ago one tap away, and shows what every remaining meal does at that time before you commit. Move today's session from the Today screen and the meals tied to it move with it.
Other apps: "Done" means now, so the day keys off the wrong number.
Travel
A day runs in the zone it started in.
Cross three time zones and the spacing holds. The app says so and offers one tap to switch when local time becomes the truth. Skip a meal and it stays a decision, not a miss. History compares home days to travel days.
Other apps: Alarms drift with the phone clock. Breakfast at 9, lunch at 10.
Surfaces
You should rarely have to open it.
Notifications carry the plate and two actions: "Ate it now" and "Not yet, ask in 20." Home and Lock Screen widgets with a live countdown. A card on the Lock Screen from an hour before each meal to thirty minutes after, with a Log button on it and at the top of the screen.
Other apps: A badge, and a screen you unlock to answer it.
Coach
An AI that proposes. You decide.
Ask for targets and a fixed formula does the arithmetic, not the model. Ask for meal ideas, or hand it a menu photo, a link or a restaurant name, and it fits options to this meal's numbers. Nothing changes until you tap a card. Not a doctor, and it says so before you ask.
Other apps: A chatbot that talks, or a coach that edits your plan without asking.
How you use it
When is your first meal, and when do you train. Quick start builds a working day from that, no AI and no account: the morning meals follow one another from your first meal, the pre-workout meal and everything after are tied to the session. Put food on the plates when you are ready, or let Coach fill them.
One tap for now, one for thirty minutes ago. The sheet shows what every remaining meal does before you commit, and the notification can log it without opening the app. The pre-workout meal holds. The rest of the day bends around you.
Client lunch, airport, empty fridge. Send Coach the menu, a link or what is in the kitchen and it fits an order to this meal's numbers. Nothing changes until you tap. History keeps score, so you can see what the road does to you.
A kitchen of about a hundred foods plus your own, entered per 100 g like the label, and saved meals you can drop onto any plate. Apple Health gets the macros at the real eat time, and never reads anything back. Light and dark. History that scores against the target you set. Your plan is a file on your phone. No account, no sign-in, nothing to sync.
Side by side
The fine print, in plain words
License
Open source. Which license, not yet.
The source goes public with 1.0; that part is settled. The license is not. The Loadout skills and Ironstack are MIT, take them and do what you like. For an app the question is whether a fork has to stay open, which is what a copyleft license like the GPL does and MIT does not. I have gone back and forth. The answer lands here with 1.0, and either way you will be able to read, change and ship it.
Price
Not settled yet. Here is why.
Every Coach question runs on a server I pay for. I want Coach in the app, and I am not willing to lose money keeping it there, so the launch price is an open question: free with Coach on an allowance, a one-time price, or Coach as the paid part of a free app. What is settled: timing, the log, the plan and the widgets cost nothing to run and will not be what you pay for, and the answer lands here before it lands in the store.
Your data
On your phone. Two switches.
The plan, the log and the day never leave the phone. Coach is a switch, off by default; when it is on, what you send it goes to a server Mission Built runs, and it is metered. Usage data is a second switch the app asks about once. The privacy page says exactly what, where, and for how long.
Not a doctor
Coach is an AI, not a doctor or a dietitian. Its targets are estimates from a formula you can read. It declines questions about medical conditions, medication, pregnancy and supplement doses and points you to a professional instead. Nothing it proposes changes your plan until you tap.
Join the beta
MealStack is on one phone every day right now: six meals, an evening session, a pre-workout meal that does not move. I add testers by hand, in small batches, from the email on your Apple ID. You get an invite from Apple, a link to install, the quick start, and a short list of things I would like you to break.
Builds expire every ninety days and you get the next one. The address is used for the invite and nothing else; you can leave from the invite email at any time.
The form is not taking names right now. Email [email protected] with the address on your Apple ID and I will add you by hand.
By invite, from the form. Small batches, added by hand.
The public door.
github.com/missionbuilt/mealstack, open source.
Questions
Also on the Rack
Eat on time. Train on time.