Recipe Crafter

A mod that lets modpackers and map-makers author Minecraft recipes visually, inside a workbench block — no KubeJS, datapack JSON, or external tools required. Recipes are written to a single hand-editable config file and go live instantly.

Overview

Place a Recipe Crafter block, open it, and build a recipe by dropping items into a familiar workbench grid. Pick the recipe family from a dropdown, set the result, fill in an id, and click Save — the recipe is appended to config/recipecrafter/recipes.json5 and becomes craftable immediately (no restart). You can also Export the generated JSON to your clipboard for use in datapacks/KubeJS, or Load and edit recipes that already exist in the game.

The Recipe Crafter Block

• A standalone block + item (recipecrafter:recipe_crafter) with a custom Blockbench model.
• Creative-only: ships with no crafting recipe; appears in the Redstone creative tab, right after the Crafting Table.
• Block entity inventory (13 slots) that persists its contents across open/close and world reloads, and scatters its items like a chest when broken.

Supported Recipe Types

Selected from a dropdown; the GUI swaps to the matching vanilla workbench texture and slot layout for each:

• Shapeless toggle is available for crafting recipes (hidden for other types).
• Shaped crafting auto-computes the minimal pattern bounding box and a compact key map (so a 1×1 item in the corner becomes a 1×1 recipe, not 3×3).
• Cooking recipes capture cook time (with sensible per-type defaults: 200 / 100 / 600 ticks) and experience.
• Stonecutting carries the output count.
• Smithing requires all three pieces (template, base, addition).

The Editor GUI

Left panel

• Type dropdown — switch recipe family; the panel texture and slots update live.
• Shapeless checkbox — crafting only.
• Edit field + "Edit" button — type a recipe id (namespace:path) to load an existing registered recipe back into the grid for modification.
• "Load recipe(s)" button — finds recipes that match the current contents.

Center

• The workbench grid / inputs and a result preview slot you drag the output into.

Right

• Done — opens the confirm screen.

Confirm / Save Screen

Opened via Done. Fields:

• Recipe ID — prefilled as recipecrafter:<result item>; editable.
• Group — optional; placeholder hints + Tab-to-autofill from groups that already exist in the game.
• Category — shown only for crafting/cooking (the types that use it); offers the valid vanilla categories with Tab-autofill.
• Cook time (ticks) and XP — shown only for cooking recipes.

Actions:

• Save — writes the recipe to recipes.json5, refreshes recipes, and copies the id to your clipboard.
• Export to Clipboard — builds the recipe JSON and copies it (does not save).
• Cancel — returns to the editor with all contents preserved.

After a successful Save or Export, the crafter wipes itself clean (contents returned to you, type reset) so the next recipe starts fresh. Cancel leaves everything untouched.

Quality-of-life: commit buttons are greyed until the id is filled and the recipe is valid, and the screen fields slide and fade in when it opens.

Loading & Looking Up Existing Recipes

• Edit by id decomposes a registered recipe back into the crafter's grid — supports shaped, shapeless, all cooking types, stonecutting, and smithing-transform recipes.
• Lookup searches for recipes matching the current contents:
  • If the result slot has an item → every recipe that produces that item.
  • Otherwise, if the grid is filled → the first matching crafting recipe.
  • Returns up to 20 matches in a scrollable list, each with its id and type and Copy ID / Copy JSON buttons.

Config File: recipes.json5

Located at config/recipecrafter/recipes.json5.

• Hand-editable at any time. Each entry is a normal vanilla recipe JSON augmented with a unique "id".
• Lenient parsing: // comments and trailing commas are tolerated.
• Comment- and formatting-preserving saves: new recipes are spliced into the array rather than rewriting the file, so your comments and hand-formatting survive every save.
• Edit by hand, then /recipecrafter reload (or relaunch) to apply.

Example shape:

{
  "recipes": [
    { "id": "recipecrafter:my_recipe", "type": "minecraft:crafting_shaped", ... }
  ]
}