Creating Poke Recipes

Overview

Kitchen is where you create, test, publish, and track your own Poke recipes.

A recipe bundles:

• onboarding context and first-message behavior
• required integrations (MCP templates)
• optional scheduled automations
• a share/install link for users

Before You Start

• A Poke account with Kitchen access at poke.com/kitchen
• For CLI workflows: Node.js 18+ and the poke npm package (run through npx poke@latest)

Create a Recipe in Kitchen

Manage a Draft Recipe

From Kitchen -> Recipes -> your recipe, draft recipes let you:

• edit onboarding context and prefilled first message
• change required integrations
• add, edit, and delete scheduled automations
• test behavior in Sandbox

Automations

Kitchen supports scheduled automations with presets and custom cron expressions. You define:

• When it runs (schedule)
• What Poke should do (action text)

Sandbox Testing

Draft recipes include a sandbox chat backed by a dedicated test user. You can send messages, inspect responses, and reset the test state from the sandbox UI.

Publish and Share

Publishing a recipe:

• marks it Published
• generates a referral/share link
• permanently locks editing for that recipe
• makes it eligible for payouts

You will typically share links like:

• https://poke.com/r/<referralCode>
• https://poke.com/p/<partnerSlug> (if configured)

How npx poke Fits In

The poke npm package helps you bring integrations into your account and, with --share, can bootstrap a shareable recipe flow.

Package: npmjs.com/package/poke

1) Authenticate CLI

npx poke@latest login

This opens your browser for authentication. Enter the code shown in your terminal to log in.

Other auth commands:

npx poke@latest logout   # Clear stored credentials
npx poke@latest whoami   # Display current user info

2) Add or expose an MCP integration

# Remote MCP server
npx poke@latest mcp add https://mcp.example.com/sse -n "My Server"
 
# With API key authentication
npx poke@latest mcp add https://mcp.example.com/sse -n "My Server" -k "sk-your-api-key"
 
# Local MCP server over tunnel
# The tunnel only forwards the port — start your MCP server first, then tunnel it:
npx poke@latest tunnel http://localhost:3000/mcp -n "Local Dev MCP"

The tunnel only forwards the local port — it does not start or manage the MCP server itself. Start your server first, then run the tunnel command pointing at it.

The tunnel stays active until you press Ctrl+C. Tools are synced automatically every 5 minutes.

Then open Kitchen and select that integration in your recipe.

3) Auto-create a share flow from CLI (--share)

# Shareable tunnel flow (+ QR code output)
npx poke@latest tunnel http://localhost:3000/mcp -n "Local Dev MCP" --share
 
# AI wraps current project as MCP, tunnels it, and shares
npx poke@latest wrap -n "My Project" --share

With --share, CLI creates a connection and returns a recipe link/QR in the terminal. The recipe can then be managed further in Kitchen.

Wrapping a project as an MCP server

The wrap command uses AI to analyze your current project and generate an MCP server from it:

npx poke@latest wrap

This will:

1. Analyze your project's structure and capabilities
2. Generate a Python FastMCP server with tools for your project's key operations
3. Start the server locally and create a tunnel

Options:

npx poke@latest wrap --port 8765      # Specify a port (default: 8765)
npx poke@latest wrap -n "My Project"  # Custom name for the connection
npx poke@latest wrap --share          # Create a shareable recipe with QR code

CLI configuration

Credentials are stored at ~/.config/poke/credentials.json (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/poke/credentials.json if set). The CLI defaults to https://poke.com and can be overridden with environment variables:

Payouts and Operations

Kitchen also includes Payouts where you can:

• view unique-user totals and lifetime earnings
• set your payout destination (Venmo phone/email/handle)
• review payout history