Questions you might have

If yours isn't here, drop us a line at hello@xbrain.dev.

What does Palate actually do?▾

Predicts how much you'll personally like a product — cannabis, wine, beer, coffee, or a dish — before you buy or order it. It's one app that covers all five categories; the more you rate, the better the predictions get.

How is this different from Leafly / Wine Spectator / generic review sites?▾

Those tell you what the average person thinks. X-Brain learns *you*. Two users can look at the same product and see different predicted ratings — that's the point.

Do I need to be at a partnered dispensary or shop?▾

No. You can rate anything you've tried, anywhere. Live menu integrations are a convenience layer for ranked discovery — not a requirement for the model.

What signals does the model use?▾

For cannabis: 40+ terpenes, cannabinoids (THC/CBD/CBG/CBN), product format (flower/vape/edible/concentrate), brand, strain genealogy, and your effect/mood tags. For wine: varietal, region, vintage, ABV, pH, tannins, body, and similar effect-style tags.

How does the photo identification work?▾

Vision waterfall: COA QR scan first (fastest, free), then terpene-sticker OCR, then label OCR + brand match, then a vision LLM call against the local catalog. Falls back gracefully — you can always pick from a list.

Is my rating data private?▾

Your individual ratings are private to you and the friends you choose to share with. We aggregate anonymized data for partner dispensaries (e.g. 'users in your area predicted ≥4.5 on these items'). Your email and identity never leave the platform.

Do I need a different account for cannabis, wine, beer, coffee, and food?▾

No — one signup covers all five. Friends, badges, and the cross-brand Knowledge Graph span every category. The personal taste model is per-category (terpene preferences don't transfer to tannins or hop bitterness), but your account, social graph, and rating history are shared.

Is it one app or one per category?▾

One app. myPalate covers cannabis, wine, beer, coffee, and food — switch the active category anytime from your profile, and the whole experience (what to scan, what to filter, what you see) re-themes to it. One download, one account, one shared backend.

What's a cohort?▾

A cluster of users with similar taste fingerprints. New users borrow predictions from their cohort until they've rated ~20 products on their own — that's how the cold-start works.

Where does the catalog data come from?▾

Per category: cannabis from storefront and dispensary APIs (Dutchie, iHeartJane, Weedmaps, SweedPOS, Trulieve, Apothecarium); wine and food from Open Food Facts and USDA; coffee and beer from roaster and brewery catalogs. Live menus refresh nightly. We don't scrape sites that ask us not to.

Palate — personalized taste predictions