Can you still?

A daily physical challenge verified live by your iPhone camera — plus an unstoppable wake-up alarm that only silences when you get out of bed and do the reps.

Comment

Inspiration

Ask almost anyone in their 20s, 30s, or 40s: "Can you still stand on one leg for 30 seconds with your eyes closed?" or "Can you still get up off the floor without using your hands?"

Almost everyone reflexively says "Of course I can." Then they try it in their living room and realize how much everyday mobility and functional balance they’ve quietly lost to desk jobs and prolonged sitting.

At the same time, we noticed another universal daily struggle: the morning snooze trap. Most people hit snooze four or five times, spend their first 30 minutes doomscrolling in bed, and start the day groggy and behind schedule.

Most fitness apps demand too much: 45-minute gym routines, manual calorie logging, and endless guilt-inducing notifications. Most alarm clocks do too little: a mindless swipe silences them from bed, inviting instant relapse.

We wanted to build the polar opposite:

  • One question a day.
  • Under 60 seconds.
  • A wake-up alarm that will not stop until you get out of bed and do the reps.
  • No honor system.

That was the birth of Can You Still? — a daily movement check-in and unstoppable mission alarm that uses your phone's camera to verify whether you actually did it.

What it does

Can You Still? combines a viral daily movement challenge with an unstoppable morning wake-up engine:

  1. The Wake-Up Mission Alarm: Connect your daily movement challenge to your morning wake-up alarm. Piercing high-decibel sirens (Nuclear Buzzer, Emergency Siren, Digital Mayhem, Morning Bugle, Vintage Bell) cut through deep sleep, Focus modes, and silent switches. Swiping or mindless tapping is disabled — the only way to silence the siren is to get out of bed, step into frame, and complete your physical mission.

  2. The Anti-Snooze Trap & 5-Minute Wake-Up Check: Dismissing the alarm from the lock screen re-arms the siren every 15 seconds until your movement is camera-verified. An optional 5-minute safety ping ensures you don't crawl back under the covers after disarming it.

  3. 24-Hour Circular Sleep Arc Dial: An intuitive visual arc dial allows you to set bedtime and wake-up targets, calculating exact sleep duration to maintain circadian rhythm and prevent sleep debt.

  4. Camera-Verified Daily Trials: Every day at 5:00 AM, a single physical test drops worldwide (single-leg balances, deep squat holds, overhead mobility reaches, and floor-to-stand transitions). The app continuously tracks your joint positions, stability, and timing. If you drop your foot early or cut your squat short, the app knows.

  5. 100% Privacy by Design: Video is analyzed strictly in memory using Apple's Vision framework and discarded in fractions of a second. No photos or video ever leave the phone, and no account is required.

  6. Animal Champions & Collectibles: Completing trials and morning missions unlocks stylized 3D animal archetypes representing physical traits — like the Flamingo Steadfoot (balance), The Ironknee Bull (squat power), The Limberspine Cat (flexibility), and The Bear Groundriser (floor-to-stand strength).

  7. Viral Shareables: Generates native 9:16 high-res Story cards with custom badges and streak counts, ready to challenge friends on TikTok, Instagram Stories, or group chats.

  8. Pro Subscription (Powered by RevenueCat): Gives users full access to Unlimited Mission Alarms, the complete Siren Sound Engine, Beast Mode difficulty tiers, the full archive of past trials, and unlimited streak protection.

How we built it

iOS Native Core: Built 100% in Swift and SwiftUI for buttery-smooth 60fps animations, custom dawn-to-sunrise gradients, sound effects, and haptic feedback. Vision & Motion Verification: Implemented on-device computer vision with VNDetectHumanBodyPoseRequest to track 19 anatomical landmarks in real-time, coupled with CoreMotion gyroscope and accelerometer algorithms for vestibular balance checks. Critical Audio & Alarm Architecture: Engineered high-priority background audio sessions and native notification bridges that break through physical mute switches and iOS Focus modes to guarantee reliable wake-ups. Monetization via RevenueCat: We integrated the RevenueCat iOS SDK to power our paywall and subscription infrastructure: Configured custom offerings supporting both Annual ($19.99/yr with a 7-day free trial) and Weekly ($2.99/wk) subscriptions via StoreKit 2. Handled seamless entitlement checking (pro), customer state refresh, and receipt restoration. Linked RevenueCat attribution with our client analytics identity to reconcile paywall impressions, conversion rates, trial starts, and churn in one cohesive pipeline without tracking private camera data. Landing Page & Infrastructure: Designed a fast, zero-bloat web companion deployed to Vercel at canyoustill.app housing the live App Store links, Support, Privacy Policy, and an interactive Web Audio synthesizer allowing users to test the alarm siren tones directly in their browser.

Challenges we ran into

Morning Lighting & Bedroom Pose Estimation Noise: Computer vision in a sterile lab is easy; in a dim bedroom at 6:30 AM with baggy pajamas, rumpled sheets, or poor lighting, pose landmarks can jitter. We implemented temporal smoothing, confidence thresholding, and continuous hysteresis so legitimate attempts aren't disqualified by a single glitchy frame. Building an "Unstoppable" iOS Alarm Safely: iOS strictly limits background activity to protect users from rogue audio. Engineering an alarm that deep sleepers cannot easily snooze from bed — while staying fully compliant with Apple's background execution guidelines — required balancing scheduled critical alerts, high-priority audio sessions, and the 15-second lock screen re-arming trap. Apple App Store Review & Subscription Compliance: Navigating Apple's strict Guideline 3.1.2(c) for auto-renewable subscriptions required ensuring exact pricing terms, renewal conditions, and EULA/Privacy links were rendered flawlessly both on the in-app paywall and in the store metadata. Image & Video Rendering for Shares: Dynamically rendering high-resolution 1080×1920 share cards with custom gradients and animated overlays without frame drops or memory leaks required fine-tuning ImageRenderer and custom offscreen composition pipelines.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Dual-Pillar Habit Loop: Successfully merging a viral daily mobility challenge with an indispensable wake-up utility — turning physical longevity into an unavoidable morning ritual. Shipped from Scratch to Approved App Store Listing: Taking an ambitious computer vision, alarm engine, and subscription app from an initial idea to Apple approval within the Ship-a-ton timeline. Flawless On-Device Privacy: Achieving robust movement and bedroom wake-up verification without storing a single frame of video or forcing users to create an account. Frictionless RevenueCat Integration: RevenueCat allowed us to build an enterprise-grade subscription engine with trial periods and restore functionality in just hours, letting us focus our energy on core pose verification and alarm reliability. A Genuinely Fun Aesthetic: Balancing the clinical science of mobility benchmarks with playful game design, tactile sleep dials, and memorable 3D animal champions.

What we learned

Habit-Stacking Solves Fitness Retention: People don't abandon fitness apps because the workouts are too short; they abandon them because carving out 45 minutes of daily willpower is hard. Attaching a 30-second mobility check to the morning alarm ritual creates an unbreakable daily retention loop. Friction Kills Alarm Relapses: Math puzzles or barcode alarms feel like an annoying chore; doing 10 squats or a 25-second balance hold physically pumps oxygen to the brain, curing sleep inertia before the user even has time to negotiate with themselves. RevenueCat Saves Weeks of Headaches: Writing custom StoreKit 2 receipt parsing, server-side validation, and trial expiration logic would have taken half the hackathon. RevenueCat turned what could have been a multi-week hurdle into a clean, declarative implementation. Visual Proof Drives Engagement: Having automated share cards showing "Passed ✓" with an animal archetype sparks natural social competition far better than dry numbers or charts.

What's next for Can you still?

Ghost Alarm Battles & Duel Missions: Allowing two friends to set the same wake-up time and race side-by-side to complete their morning mission first. Apple Watch & Haptic Coaching: Adding watchOS companion support to deliver gentle wrist taps that escalate into full alarms if you don't get out of bed. More Animal Champions & Habit Ladders: Expanding the roster with agility and flexibility archetypes (The Gazelle, The Tree Frog) and seasonal community challenges. RevenueCat Paywall Experiments: Using RevenueCat Experiments to A/B test paywall messaging, trial lengths, and onboarding discount hooks.

Built With

  • coremotion
  • ios
  • revenuecat
  • storekit
  • swift
  • swiftui
  • vision-framework
Share this project:

Updates

Submission history