SparkMacro: complete setup, daily logging and recovery guide
Posted by Chris
SparkMacro: complete setup, daily logging and recovery guide SparkMacro turns one plain-language recap into a food and activity journal. Start with a calorie plan, add meals and movement throughout the day, and review your progress without maintaining a spreadsheet. The browser app is available now at macro.tomsparkbox.com. The native mobile app is coming soon. 1. Understand what Ultimate includes Your active SparkBox Ultimate key unlocks cloud AI estimates in SparkMacro at no extra subscription charge. Open the tracker, choose Connect Ultimate, and paste the existing key from your SparkBox purchase email. An upgraded Legend key can be valid even if its prefix has not changed; the service checks the entitlement, not just the appearance of the key. You do not need a running SparkBox server to use the hosted tracker. Your license is checked by SparkBox and is not sent to the food-estimation provider. If access fails, keep your journal in place and verify that the key belongs to the Ultimate purchase or upgrade. Do not buy another copy merely to troubleshoot a missing entitlement. Current hosted AI limits are six attempts per minute and 60 per UTC day per license. Shared service limits also apply. Failed requests can consume quota. Included access is not an unlimited AI-credit promise. Without licensed cloud AI, local food matching, saved journal viewing and exports remain available; local matching is less capable and visibly excludes foods it cannot identify. 2. Set a starting plan Open the app and enter your current weight and goal weight. The setup can estimate a starting plan using height, age and the sex coefficient shown in the form, or you can enter your own calorie and macro targets. Use consistent units and check the resulting values before accepting them. The estimated plan starts with a rest-day baseline. Exercise belongs in your daily recap, not in a complicated weekly exercise schedule during setup. Manual targets keep the budget you choose. Targets and food estimates are planning tools, not measurements of your individual metabolism. If you do not want an automatically estimated target, choose your own values or defer setup and explore the journal. A clinician-provided nutrition plan should take precedence over an app estimate. This guide explains the interface; it does not prescribe calorie intake, weight loss speed or treatment. 3. Log your first day 1. Check the selected date before you enter anything. 2. Type an ordinary description such as Breakfast: two eggs, two slices of toast with butter, and coffee with milk. 3. Choose Add to today or press Enter. Shift+Enter makes a new line. 4. Review the estimated foods and the calorie, protein, carbohydrate and fat totals. 5. Add lunch later in the same input. Each successful submission appends entries and clears the input for the next one. 6. If you need to correct an estimate, use the optional entry details rather than repeatedly submitting the same meal. 7. Finish the day with Done for today when you want the day's assessment saved. You can describe more than one meal and your movement in one recap. Include portion sizes when you know them, but there is no requirement to answer a questionnaire for every ingredient. Missing quantities produce typical-portion estimates. A packaged food's actual label is stronger evidence than the AI's guess. Repeated foods are separate entries. Submitting “banana” twice logs two entries; the app cannot know whether you ate two bananas or repeated a submission accidentally. Check the journal after a network delay before submitting again. If an AI request fails, the text is retained and the app shows the error rather than silently pretending an estimate succeeded. 4. Add movement and weigh-ins Describe walking, steps or a workout in the same input you use for meals. Duration and intensity improve the estimate. Logged activity adjusts that day's estimated allowance; it does not turn exercise into food calories consumed or carry the activity into tomorrow. The app uses approximate activity models. For overlapping step counts and walking/running, it uses the larger energy estimate instead of adding both. Other workouts can add to the day's activity. These safeguards reduce obvious double counting, but a phone's steps and a vague workout description are not laboratory measurements. Use Progress to follow recorded weights over time and Journal to revisit previous days and saved assessments. Compare trends and the dates of entries rather than judging the whole plan from one daily fluctuation. If a day looks impossible, first check its units, portions, duplicate entries and recorded activity. 5. Phone, dictation and offline use Open the tracker in Safari on iPhone or your browser on Android. Use Add to Home Screen or Install app if offered, then open the icon. This is the mobile-friendly web app, not a native app-store release. Dictate through the keyboard microphone or the app's available voice entry. Speech processing follows the browser or operating system's provider behavior. Voice entry is separate from the cloud AI that interprets the resulting text. After the app has loaded online, cached app files can reopen the journal and local matching offline. Cloud AI requires an internet connection. Browser cache eviction can remove offline app files, so test offline opening on the device before relying on it during a trip. A Home Screen installation does not automatically synchronize journals between devices. 6. What stays local and what goes to AI Your saved journal, targets and history stay in browser storage unless you enable encrypted cloud backup. Browser storage itself is not an encrypted vault. A person with access to an unlocked device may be able to read it. Only the newly submitted food/activity text is sent for cloud estimation; the app does not attach the entire journal and profile. However, names, weights or other personal details that you type in that text travel with the text. Avoid adding details that are unnecessary for estimating a meal. Provider processing is not a promise of zero retention. The license check does not include your food text. Cloud backup is another separate option: it uploads an encrypted journal snapshot, not a request to the AI to analyze your history. The recovery key stays with you. 7. Make a local backup first Open Settings → Export backup and save the JSON file somewhere private. Export includes the journal, targets and unfinished draft. It is the portable copy to keep before changing browser profiles, replacing a phone or trying a restore. Settings → Restore backup lets you choose the saved file and review the restore prompt. Confirming replaces the journal in that browser; it is not an automatic merge. Export the current device first if it contains anything you need. Do not use a private browsing window as your only long-term journal. The app also keeps recent recovery snapshots in the same browser when space allows. These can help undo a bad save but do not protect against losing the device or clearing all website data. Downloaded backups are the protection against those failures. 8. Enable encrypted automatic cloud backup 1. Connect Ultimate and open Settings. 2. Choose Set up automatic encrypted backup. 3. Download the recovery key and save it outside the browser. 4. Confirm that you saved it, then choose Enable & back up now. 5. Wait for Cloud backup saved and check the last-successful-backup time. To recover on another browser, connect the same Ultimate license, open the backup section, paste the saved recovery key and choose Find & unlock cloud backup. Review the preview before choosing Restore decrypted journal. Export any existing destination data first. This is backup and restore, not automatic multi-device merging. Do not edit separate copies all week and expect both histories to be combined. If the app reports a newer backup or a conflict, preserve each local copy before deciding which snapshot should become current. The service limits plaintext backups to 10 MB. Recovery needs both the original license and the recovery key. Support cannot decrypt a backup without your key. A different license can identify a different backup, so do not replace your existing key as a troubleshooting shortcut. 9. Delete, disconnect or troubleshoot Disconnecting Ultimate removes access from this browser without deleting the journal. Delete all my data removes the local journal and stops automatic backups on that browser; it does not delete an existing cloud backup. Delete cloud backup is a separate action. Infrastructure recovery may retain historical encrypted copies for up to 30 days. If totals look wrong, inspect portions and duplicate submissions first. If AI is unavailable, read the quota or connection message and keep the unsent text. If data seems missing, verify the exact website, browser profile and backup before clearing storage. If a restore is offered, read whether it will replace the current journal. For help, use d/sparkmacro. Include browser/device, whether you use local matching or cloud AI, the exact redacted error and a made-up sample meal. Keep your real journal, health details, license and recovery key out of public screenshots. Use private support for entitlement issues. --- Updated September 14, 2026. Website guide. Please keep keys and personal data out of public replies.