I built a virtual pet that gets stronger when you exercise
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Hello HN,I built Motion, a fitness app where your virtual pet (we call it a Motmot) grows and gets stronger as you become more active.I wanted a fitness app that didn't feel like a fitness app. Most tools are either data-heavy dashboards or generic streak counters. Neither kept me moving. I thought a creature that visibly reflects your health might create a different kind of attachment.The pet is tied to a broader system: weekly challenges against friends, points for any type of movement, and personalized goals that recalibrate based on your actual activity history rather than fixed targets. It connects with phones, smartwatches, and other fitness apps so it works however you already track movement.We're also running a beta of Fit Bingo, a bingo card of weekly fitness tasks, which has been more popular than I expected.Would love to hear what you think, especially if this sounds like something you'd actually use.
HN · launched Apr 1, 2026 · 7 upvotes (top 61%) · 1 view
Niche: gamified habit and tracking apps · 136 launches, 17 in the last 7 days ▼ -6% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Hardware & robotics
- B2C
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 136 launches in gamified habit and tracking apps →
Could you build this?
Yes This is a standard mobile gamified fitness app that integrates with Apple Health and Google Health Connect to map daily step counts to virtual pet stats.
Discussion
6 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Strava, Generic fitness apps
Concerns raised: Suspicious new user comments from potential developers/friends, Unclear how exercise detection works, Whether pet appearance actually changes with different exercises
Feature requests: Pet appearance changes based on exercise type, Camera-based exercise detection, Battle/compete with friends feature, Strava integration
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 409 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #177 of 410 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 149 days after the earliest competitor.
- LiftLegends · ph · 2026-09-16 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.56
- WristPet · ph · 2026-11-12 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.56
- Petdometer - Kiwo Pet · ph · 2026-10-23 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- RUNTORY · ph · 2026-09-26 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- Hamilton · hn · 2026-09-25 · 13 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- Habikin: Habit Tracker · ph · 2026-09-19 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- FitPal · ph · 2026-10-15 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- GYM RPG: Workout Tracker Game · ph · 2026-10-01 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.46
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