---
title: Recipes
description: A recipe records how a picture, text or data set was made, so the tenth image matches the first and any of them can be made again.
url: https://tellscript.com/docs/recipes
last_updated: 2026-09-27
---

# Recipes

Wherever AI makes something, the same holds as for code: lose the prompt and you lose the series. A recipe is a Tellscript for generated content. It records the brief, the model, the references and the parameters, and which files came from it.

```tell file=tell/recipes/product-photos.tell.md
---
tell: recipe/product-photos
model: gpt-image-2.5 · sunburst · 2K
refs: [brand/BRAND.md#photography]
lineage: every photo from this brief
---
# Product photos

## Style · fixed
Black-and-white studio photograph,
cast concrete on seamless pale grey.
Key light upper left, 45 degrees.
One colour only: signal green, one detail.

## Why
Green means one thing: what stays.

## Subject · free
One sentence per piece, e.g. shop-lamp.txt
```

## Rules for recipes

- **The style is fixed, the subject is free.** One brief holds a series together; each picture adds one sentence.
- **References are originals.** Real photographs, product shots, logos, screenshots. Never a generated image as the reference for the next one; quality drops with every generation.
- **Every output keeps its lineage.** A small sidecar next to each file names the recipe, model, prompt and date, so any file can be traced and made again.
- **The same works for documents and design.** Structure, tone, sources and template for a quarterly report; colours, type, spacing and their reasons for a design system.