SpineSpy

AI-powered posture & focus monitor that runs in your macOS menubar. Takes periodic snapshots to detect bad posture and phone distractions without keeping your camera always on.

If you want tiny local-first tools for healthier desk work, starring helps me know this is worth polishing.

Demo

shows how SpineSpy plays a posture reminder after repeated bad snapshots.

Privacy

SpineSpy processes snapshots locally on your device. Images are not uploaded, stored, or sent to external servers.

Features

• Checks posture without a camera always-on feeling - Opens the webcam briefly, analyzes a snapshot, then closes it
• Learns your normal sitting position - Calibrates against your own good-posture baseline instead of using a one-size-fits-all angle
• Catches both slouching and leaning - Flags forward slouching and side tilt with MediaPipe Pose
• Nudges you when attention drifts - Spots phone distractions with YOLO26s object detection
• Smart alerts - Shows a notification and plays a posture reminder clip after repeated bad posture
• Easy to keep out of the way - Runs from the macOS menubar with a floating posture pet and speech bubble, pause, interval, calibration, and sound toggles

Setup

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/jananadiw/spinespy.git
cd spinespy

# Install dependencies
poetry install

Usage

# Option 1: Using the run script
./run.sh

# Option 2: Poetry script
poetry run start

# Option 3: Direct Python module
poetry run python menubar_app.py

Build

poetry install --with dev
./build_dmg.sh

The build requires Python 3.10 through 3.13 and the local model assets pose_landmarker.task and yolo26s.pt. It outputs dist/SpineSpy.app and SpineSpy.dmg.

The app appears as a 🦸 icon in your menubar and shows a small floating posture pet with a state message above your windows. Right-click the menubar icon to:

• ✓ Monitoring - Pause/resume monitoring
• Interval - Change snapshot frequency
• Settings → Sound Clips - Turn posture reminder clips on/off
• Calibrate - Capture your current good-posture baseline
• Quit - Exit the app

How It Works

1. Every N minutes, the app briefly opens your camera and takes a snapshot
2. MediaPipe Pose analyzes the image for slouching or tilting relative to your calibrated baseline
3. YOLO26s checks for phones in the frame with improved small-object detection
4. Camera closes immediately after analysis
5. Floating pet artwork, speech bubble, and menubar icon update: upright pet/🦸 (good) or curled pet/🧟 (bad posture)
6. After 5 consecutive bad snapshots → shows a notification and plays a random reminder clip if sound clips are enabled

Configuration

Edit these values in menubar_app.py:

SLOUCH_THRESHOLD = 0.1   # forward lean sensitivity
TILT_THRESHOLD = 0.05    # side tilt sensitivity
BAD_STREAK_LIMIT = 5     # bad snapshots before alert

Tech Stack

• OpenCV - Camera snapshot capture
• MediaPipe - Real-time pose estimation
• YOLO26s (Ultralytics) - Object detection for phone spotting
• rumps - macOS menubar application framework

Requirements

• macOS (tested on macOS 10.15+)
• Python 3.10 through 3.13
• Webcam

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• MediaPipe for their excellent pose detection framework
• Ultralytics for YOLO26s
• The rumps library for making macOS menubar apps easy