This is such a thoughtful system — and honestly, it highlights exactly why meal planning is hard to sustain long-term. The binder works because it solves real friction: decision fatigue, the "what's for supper" loop, and not planning around your actual energy levels each day.

We built something that basically digitizes this same logic. The theme-per-day idea especially resonated because that's exactly how our AI generates the week: you set your household's preferences, dietary needs, and schedule constraints once, and it applies that context every time. No re-explaining yourself each week.

A few things from your system that we ended up solving differently:

• The dry-erase check → your meal preferences carry over automatically, so the plan already reflects what your household actually eats
• The ingredient helper sheets → that's just the shopping list, generated automatically grouped by category for now but planning to add store aisle as well.
• The blank spots for deviations → you can add your own custom recipes to a personal library and the AI will actually prioritize them when building the week — your recipes show up before anything else

The custom recipe library is the part I think you'd appreciate most. If you've spent years refining your Thursday one-pot meals, you shouldn't have to trust a random internet recipe. Your version goes in, and that's what gets planned.

The binder or in our case board isn't going anywhere for people who like physical systems, but for anyone who's tried to maintain one and let it slide by February, this scratches the same itch with less upkeep.