Cookbook Customization

The Cookbook is your library of recipes — step-by-step templates that guide the AI through structured workflows. It's where you manage built-in recipes and create your own.

Accessing the Cookbook

1. Click Customize in the sidebar
2. Go to the Cookbook tab
3. You'll see all your available recipes listed

Built-In Recipes

StarZero Agents comes with three ready-to-use recipes:

• Podcast Cutdown — Extract a self-contained story from a longer episode
• Social Media Cutdown — Create short, vertical clips for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts
• Podcast Summary — Condense a full episode into a structured highlight video

These recipes are designed around proven content structures and work well for most podcasts and interviews.

Creating a Custom Recipe

Want a recipe for your own workflow? Here's how:

1. In the Cookbook tab, click to add a new recipe
2. Give it a clear, descriptive name (e.g., "Client Testimonial Clip" or "Weekly Recap")
3. Add steps in order — each step is a plain-English instruction
4. Save the recipe

Your new recipe is immediately available for use in any chat and will appear in the recipe picker on the welcome screen alongside the built-in recipes.

Writing Effective Steps

Each step should tell the AI what to do clearly and specifically:

• "Search for moments where the guest shares a personal story"
• "Select the 3 most emotionally engaging clips"
• "Arrange clips from shortest to longest"
• "Add word-by-word captions"
• "Render in 9:16 portrait format"

Keep each step focused on one action. If a step tries to do too much, break it into two.

How Recipes Work in Practice

When you use a recipe (built-in or custom), each step becomes a tracked task in the to-do system. The AI works through the steps in order, and you can see the progress in real time in the chat.

To use a recipe, pick it from the recipe picker on the welcome screen, or just ask for it naturally in the chat:

"Run the Podcast Cutdown recipe on this episode"

"Use my Client Testimonial recipe"

"Create a social media cutdown from this interview"

Editing Recipes

Recipes aren't set in stone. Come back to the Cookbook anytime to:

• Edit steps — Refine instructions based on what's working
• Reorder steps — Change the sequence of the workflow
• Add steps — Expand the recipe with additional actions
• Remove steps — Simplify the workflow

Removing Recipes

If a recipe is no longer useful, delete it from the Cookbook. This won't affect any content you've already created with that recipe.

Tips for Building Your Recipe Library

• Start with the built-in recipes. Use them a few times to understand how recipes work before creating your own.
• Build recipes from successful workflows. If you find yourself repeating the same steps in chat, that's a perfect candidate for a recipe.
• Keep recipes focused. A recipe that does one thing well is more useful than one that tries to do everything.
• Include output specifications. Always add steps for captions, aspect ratio, and rendering so the output is consistent every time.
• Iterate and improve. Run your recipe, review the results, and adjust the steps. Good recipes get better over time.
• Share with your team. Once you've refined a recipe that works well, share it so everyone on your team follows the same process. This keeps your content consistent across creators.