Inspiration
The fitness app market is crowded, but most apps do one thing well and neglect the rest — a great workout tracker with no nutrition support, or a calorie counter with no training intelligence. We were inspired to build Elitemode as an all-in-one fitness platform that combines workout tracking, nutrition management, GPS route tracking, progress analytics, and an AI-powered personal coach — all in a single, beautifully designed mobile app. The goal was to make serious fitness tools accessible to everyone, not just people who can afford a personal trainer.
What it does
Elitemode is a cross-platform mobile app (iOS & Android) with five core pillars: AI Coach — A conversational fitness coach powered by Claude (Anthropic API) that provides personalized workout advice, nutrition guidance, form tips, and generates custom workout and meal plans based on the user's goals, experience level, and preferences. Workout Tracking — Log workouts, browse an exercise library (powered by ExerciseDB/RapidAPI), track calories burned, and maintain workout streaks with an XP-based gamification system. Nutrition Management — Track daily meals across breakfast/lunch/dinner/snacks, monitor macros (protein, carbs, fat), visualize calorie intake with animated ring charts, and get AI-generated meal plans tailored to dietary restrictions and goals. Progress Analytics — Weight tracking with line charts, workout contribution heatmaps, before/after progress photos, body measurements, and a comprehensive dashboard showing trends over time. GPS Route Tracking — Real-time map-based tracking for runs, walks, and bike rides with pace, distance, duration, and elevation stats, plus route history and shareable route cards. Additional features include: Gamification — XP system with 10 levels (Beginner to Immortal), streak rewards, achievements, and community challenges with leaderboards. Health Integration — Syncs with Apple HealthKit (iOS) and Health Connect (Android) for steps, heart rate, sleep, calories, and distance data from wearable devices. Community — Social feed, activity sharing, and community challenges. Smart Notifications — Push notifications for workout reminders, streak maintenance, and motivational quotes. Widget & Watch Support — iOS/Android home screen widgets and Apple Watch/Wear OS companion apps. Cloud Functions — Automated welcome emails and re-engagement emails for inactive users via Firebase Cloud Functions and Resend.
How we built it
Elitemode is built with React Native and Expo (SDK 52) for cross-platform mobile development. The backend is powered entirely by Firebase — Firestore for real-time data storage, Firebase Auth (with Google Sign-In) for authentication, Firebase Storage for progress photos, and Firebase Cloud Functions for server-side automation. The AI features are powered by the Anthropic Claude API (Claude 3 Haiku for fast, efficient responses), which drives the conversational coach, workout plan generation, and meal plan creation. The exercise database is sourced from ExerciseDB via RapidAPI. Maps and route tracking use react-native-maps with OpenStreetMap tiles and expo-location for GPS. Charts and data visualization use react-native-chart-kit and react-native-gifted-charts. The app features a polished dark-mode UI with smooth animations powered by React Native's Animated API and react-native-reanimated.
Challenges we faced
Integrating health data across two completely different platforms (Apple HealthKit vs. Android Health Connect) required building a unified service abstraction layer with platform-specific implementations and graceful fallbacks. Getting the AI coach to provide genuinely useful, personalized fitness advice (rather than generic responses) required careful prompt engineering that incorporates the user's real workout history, goals, and profile data. Building native widget and watch app support through Expo required custom config plugins (withIOSWidget, withAndroidWidget, withWatchApp, withWearOS) since these aren't natively supported by Expo. Managing real-time GPS tracking with smooth map rendering while maintaining battery efficiency was a significant engineering challenge. What we learned The power of Claude's API for building context-aware, domain-specific AI assistants — feeding it structured user data produces remarkably personalized coaching. How to architect a large-scale React Native app with clean separation of concerns (hooks, services, context, components, screens). The importance of offline-first design — caching strategies for health data, exercise libraries, and user preferences ensure a smooth experience even with poor connectivity.
Built With
- 3
- android
- anthropic
- api
- apple
- auth
- chart
- charts
- claude
- cloud
- connect
- emails)
- exercisedb
- expo.io
- functions)
- gifted
- haiku)
- health
- healthkit
- in-app
- javascript-react-native-expo-(sdk-52)-firebase-(firestore
- kit
- location
- lucide
- maps
- native
- navigation
- notifications)
- notify
- openstreetmap)
- purchases)
- push
- rapidapi)
- react
- reanimated
- resend
- revenuecat
- storage
- transactional