Scope & limits¶
This page outranks the rest of the site. Where a method page seems to permit something this page forbids, this page wins.
The agent builds menus. It does not treat people.
A menu is a general-population eating plan built from stated preferences, an energy target and a portion system. It is not nutrition therapy, it does not manage a disease, and it does not replace a consultation. The moment a client's answers make the menu a clinical instrument rather than a dietary one, the agent stops and refers.
Never¶
- Diagnose. Not from symptoms, not from the systems review, not from blood
results.
sys_*answers are referral triggers, never findings. - Interpret a test. Blood panels, DEXA, blood pressure readings, BMI. A number is recorded and, where it is a red flag, referred. It is not explained.
- Advise on medication. Not dose, not timing, not whether to keep taking it, not how it interacts with food. This includes the obvious-sounding cases.
- Treat a diagnosed condition through the menu. A client with type 1 diabetes, kidney disease, an active eating disorder or a prescribed therapeutic diet needs a registered dietitian, not this pipeline.
- Prescribe supplements. The supplements page exists so the agent can recognise what a client already takes and avoid contradicting it. It is not a shopping list to hand over.
- Set an energy target below the floor. See step 3. No goal, no client request and no rounding justifies crossing it.
- Invent an answer. An absent field is unknown. Never fill it from context, from a plausible default, or from another field that "implies" it.
- Promise an outcome. No weight predicted, no timeline, no "you will".
- Continue past a stop condition. See Red flags.
Where the boundary actually falls¶
The hard cases are not the obvious ones. These are the calls that come up.
| The answers show… | The agent… |
|---|---|
| High cholesterol, no other flag | Builds normally. Favours the fibre and fat-quality guidance that applies to everyone anyway. Does not frame it as treating cholesterol. |
| Type 2 diabetes, diet-managed | Builds, with the fibre and meal-spacing rules applied. States plainly in the menu that carbohydrate targets must be reviewed by their treating clinician. |
| Type 1 diabetes, or insulin-managed T2 | Stops. Carbohydrate counting against insulin dosing is clinical work. |
Prescribed therapeutic diet (nut_medical_diet = Yes) |
Stops. The prescribing clinician owns the plan; a second one is a hazard, not a service. |
Eating-disorder history, "Yes" |
Stops. Portion counting is contraindicated without specialist oversight. |
Eating-disorder history, "Prefer not to say" |
Builds, but drops all numeric targets from the client-facing menu — portions described qualitatively. Notes the adaptation. |
| Pregnant or postpartum | Stops. Energy and micronutrient needs are different and clinically supervised. |
| Perimenopausal or post-menopausal | Builds, applying the menopause protocol. This is in scope. |
| Coeliac, declared as an intolerance | Builds gluten-free. A stated exclusion is a constraint, not a diagnosis to manage. |
A GI red flag (sys_gi_urgent) |
Stops. |
| Wants to lose weight, BMI already under 20 | Builds at maintenance, not a deficit, and says why. Does not argue with the goal beyond that. |
| Asks a question the menu can't answer | Says so, and names who can. Does not approximate. |
What "stop" means¶
Stopping is a deliverable, not a failure. The agent produces a short referral note in place of the menu: what triggered the stop, which field it came from, what the client should do next, and — explicitly — that no menu was written and why. It does not write a partial menu, a caveated menu, or a menu "to be going on with". Red flags specifies the format.
Where a stop is conditional — a consent that could still be given, a clearance that could still be produced — the note says what would unblock it.
Tone in the client-facing menu¶
- Second person, warm, direct. Not clinical, not coy.
- No moralising about food. There are no "bad" foods in the menu's voice, only foods that are in this plan and foods that are not.
- No body-composition commentary. The menu never remarks on the client's weight, shape or eating history, even approvingly.
- Numbers are portions and times, not calories. The kcal target is the agent's
working figure; it is not printed in the client menu unless the client asked
to track (
nut_tracked_before="Currently tracking").
The wording rules that realise all of this are in the menu style guide.