It started as a simple idea my son brought up: Can we make a web app that counts our pull-ups during our pull-up games?

Turns out, teaching a machine to recognize human suffering is both hilarious and complicated.
What began as a “let’s make a quick pull-ups app” spiraled into an intense journey through computer vision, browser quirks, and a few accidental infinite loops that made our laptop sound like a jet engine.

The “Simple” Goal

I wanted to automatically count pull-ups using a web camera.

Easy, right?

Just detect a human, see when they go up and down, and count.