Building a Peloton Alternative: Where Things Stand

I'm two years into a $50/month Peloton membership, and I decided to see if I could build something that covers what I actually use without the subscription. Most of the time I just put on my headphones to listen to my own playlist while following the cadence / resistance ranges displayed on screen. This is post one: a snapshot of where the project is right now.

The stack

I'm building this with Expo and React Native, in TypeScript. It's a mobile-first app. My day job has been React/TypeScript on the web, so this is my first real dive into React Native; Expo makes that transition smoother.

What's working

The core flow is in place: a workout picker screen where you choose from a list of workout templates, which hands off to a player screen that runs the selected workout. It's simple, but it's the real skeleton the rest of the app will hang off of.

Small touches already wired in: haptic feedback (via expo-haptics) and keeping the screen awake during a workout (expo-keep-awake), so the phone doesn't lock mid-session.

What's next

This is very early, one commit in, core navigation working, no styling polish yet, no real workout content beyond placeholder templates. Next up is fleshing out the actual workout data, then probably some kind of history/progress tracking, which is what'll really start to replace what Peloton's app provides.

Code's public on GitHub if you want to follow along.

github.com/TianaRuiz/cycling-app