Building in public

Why I built Cadence.

April 9, 2026 · 5 min read · by Samir Patel

I've been "starting Monday" for six months. Probably closer to six years if I'm being honest.

Every failed gym attempt had the same shape. I'd get a burst of motivation — usually after seeing a photo I didn't like, or an old friend in better shape, or just waking up tired of feeling tired. I'd sign up. I'd download three apps. I'd watch YouTube videos about programming. I'd show up on day one feeling invincible. Day three I'd feel sore in places I didn't know could be sore. Day seven I'd be tired and sleep badly and skip. Day eight the shame would kick in. Day ten I'd quit.

And then two months later, I'd do it all over again.

The apps were the problem. (Some of them.)

I tried everything in the App Store. MyFitnessPal. Hevy. Strong. Fitbod. Apple Fitness+. They all did something right. But none of them actually helped me with the thing I needed most: telling me what to do today.

They were trackers. "Here's your data." OK — but what do I DO with it? Do I push through when I'm tired? Do I skip the squat day because my lower back is tight? Is 3 hours of sleep enough to train on? Is this weight too heavy? Is it too light?

A tracker doesn't answer those questions. A coach does.

So I hired a coach.

Two 30-minute sessions a week at my gym. Eighty bucks a session. And it was... fine? The coach was nice. He knew his stuff. But our sessions were the only hour a week he was actually thinking about me. The other 167 hours — when I was deciding whether to train, how to eat, what to do about my sore shoulder — I was on my own.

And I was paying roughly $640 a month for that one hour of thinking.

Personal training, it turns out, isn't designed for real life. It's designed for the lucky few who only need supervision in the gym and have everything else figured out.

Then I tried something embarrassing.

One night — sometime around start #7 — I opened Claude (the AI chatbot) and typed out my whole situation. Goal: lose 20 lbs, build some muscle. Equipment: a cheap gym membership. Experience: a beginner who kept starting over. Schedule: 3-4 days a week if I'm lucky. Today: slept 4 hours, wired, stressed, probably shouldn't push.

It wrote me a plan.

Not a generic one. A specific one. "Given you slept 4 hours and feel stressed, let's skip the heavy day and do a 20-minute zone 2 walk plus some mobility. Save the squats for tomorrow when you've slept."

It was the first time an "app" had ever given me advice that actually took my actual day into account.

I came back the next morning. I told it what I did. I told it how I felt. It adjusted. I did the same thing the day after. And the day after. I kept showing up because something was finally listening.

That was 3 months ago.

I lost 8 pounds. I started squatting in the 200s. I didn't skip a week. My HRV went up. My sleep improved. I started writing down notes about what was working and what wasn't.

And somewhere along the way I realized: this should be an app.

Not for me — I already had it. But for the six-year-old version of me, or the thirty-two-year-old who just bought a gym bag for the tenth time, or the friend who keeps texting me "starting Monday" every Sunday night.

There are millions of us. We don't need another tracker. We need a coach who's in our pocket.

What Cadence actually is

Cadence is an AI fitness coach you can text. On your iPhone. For free.

It reads your HealthKit data — sleep, steps, HRV, workouts, active calories — so you never have to enter the same thing twice. It builds your plan every day based on your actual state. It adjusts when you sleep badly. It celebrates when you PR. It notices when you've skipped two days and gently asks what's going on (no shame, just curiosity).

You pick a coach persona — there are six, mapped to six different goals. Alex for fat loss. Jordan for muscle. Sam for strength. Riley for general wellbeing. Casey for athletic performance. Morgan for "just help me stay consistent."

500+ exercises. Workout logger with a rest timer and plate calculator built in. Exercise history one tap away. Save your favorite workouts as templates and start them with one button.

No subscription. No ads. No in-app purchases. Free today — and pricing won't change without notice.

Why free?

Two reasons.

First — honest one — I didn't build Cadence to make money. I built it because I needed it and couldn't find it. I'm not trying to spin up a venture-scale startup right now. I'm trying to help people (including me) actually stick to the thing.

Second — practical one — this is the early version. v2.0 just shipped with smart notifications, auto-starting rest timer, plate calculator, exercise history, workout templates, and a proper first-run tutorial. If it turns out lots of people are using it, maybe there's a paid tier eventually (pro features, not a paywall on what's already here). For now, let me worry about making it good. You worry about starting Monday for real.

What's next

Here's what I'm working on, roughly in order:

I'll post updates here every week or two. Every Sunday I'll share real numbers on Twitter: how many people downloaded, what broke, what I learned. If you're into build-in-public stuff, that's where to follow along.

One more thing

If you're reading this and you've ever started Monday and quit Wednesday — I genuinely get it. I still wake up most mornings wanting to quit. Cadence isn't magic. It's not going to make you want to train. But it will make it harder to quit, because for the first time, the thing you're using actually knows you.

Try it. Tell me what sucks. I'll fix it.

— Samir

Ready to find your rhythm?

Cadence is free on iPhone. No subscription. No ads.

Download Cadence →