Lads

Fitness is easier with friends. Lads helps you stay consistent with personalised coaching, shared progress, and accountability every day. 50+ users already using the app!!

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Inspiration

Staying consistent with fitness is hard, but it's much easier when you're doing it with friends.

The problem is that today's fitness apps are either built around tracking your own metrics or sharing everything publicly. Instagram is too noisy, Strava feels overrated, and group chats quickly lose momentum.

We wanted to build something smaller and more personal - a private fitness room where close friends can stay accountable together.

The idea behind Lads is simple: if your friends are already out for a run, lifting at the gym, or closing their activity rings, you're naturally more likely to do the same.

What it does

Lads is an AI-powered private fitness companion built for small groups of friends.

Users create a private room where workouts, runs, steps, recovery, and health data can be shared automatically through Apple Health and wearable integrations.

Instead of public feeds, followers, or endless scrolling, Lads focuses on accountability.

OpenAI powers personalized coaching and group intelligence by generating:

  • Personalized daily insights
  • Smart motivational nudges
  • Weekly AI summaries
  • Group activity analysis
  • Consistency tracking
  • Recovery recommendations

Rather than acting like another chatbot, AI works quietly in the background, surfacing the right insight at the right time to help everyone stay consistent.

How we built it

Lads is built using:

  • React Native (Expo SDK 57)
  • TypeScript
  • Supabase for Authentication, PostgreSQL, and Row Level Security
  • Native Google Sign-In
  • React Native Unistyles for a reusable design system
  • OpenAI API for AI-powered coaching, summaries, and personalized insights

Authentication uses native Google Sign-In and securely exchanges Google ID tokens for Supabase sessions. User profiles are protected with Row Level Security so every user only has access to their own data.

The product follows a simple three-tab experience:

  • 🏠 Home: Your daily progress, friends' activity, and AI insights.
  • 👥 Lads: A private room where your group shares workouts and celebrates progress.
  • 🙂 Profile: Personal stats, connected devices, and account settings.

The UI follows Apple's Human Interface Guidelines with a focus on simplicity, whitespace, and reducing cognitive load.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges wasn't technical; it was deciding what not to build.

Most fitness apps eventually become another social network filled with followers, public feeds, leaderboards, and engagement metrics.

We intentionally removed those ideas and focused on building something that feels personal, calm, and motivating.

Another challenge was making AI genuinely useful instead of forcing a chatbot into the experience. We wanted AI to understand activity patterns across both individuals and groups, then surface short, actionable insights that encourage healthier habits.

Designing an interface that balances automation, privacy, and accountability while remaining incredibly simple was another major challenge throughout development.

What we learned

Building Lads reinforced that accountability is often more powerful than motivation.

People don't need another dashboard full of graphs; they need the feeling that their closest friends are working toward the same goal.

We also learned that AI doesn't always need to be conversational. Some of the best experiences come from AI quietly understanding context and delivering a helpful insight exactly when it's needed.

Finally, we realized that small, trusted communities create much stronger habits than large public social networks, and AI can amplify those communities by making accountability feel effortless.

What's next

This is just the beginning.

Next, we plan to add:

  • Apple Health integration
  • WHOOP integration
  • Fitbit and Garmin support
  • AI-generated weekly and monthly health reports
  • Personalized workout recommendations
  • Adaptive recovery suggestions
  • Voice-based AI coaching
  • Shared AI challenges for groups
  • Predictive habit and consistency analysis

Our long-term vision is to build an AI fitness companion that doesn't just track health, but helps close friends build healthier habits together.

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