About six months after I started working from home, a stiff, aching neck had become part of daily life. Eventually I started going in for manual therapy.
I felt fine on the days I came out of treatment, but after a few hours back at my desk staring at code, my head had crept out toward the screen without my noticing. Treatment wasn't the problem — the problem was that during all those hours of sitting, nobody (not even me) was watching my posture.
You already have a camera
Then it struck me as odd. My laptop already had a camera, yet there was no app that used it to watch my posture. I looked into posture apps, but most just sent reminders at fixed intervals and had no idea whether I actually had tech neck at that moment.
My day job is in computer vision, so I thought, 'Why not just let the camera judge it?' and built a prototype over a weekend. That was the start of RightPose AI.
Why we built it on-device
When we said we'd watch posture with a camera, the first reaction was always the worry: 'Is my face being sent somewhere?' Honestly, that was my biggest hesitation too. So we set one rule from the start — posture images never leave this device.
I built it on Google's on-device AI model (MediaPipe) so all body-landmark detection happens entirely on your own computer. Since no images are sent to a server, server costs are nearly zero, and more importantly, it became an app I could comfortably leave running all day myself.
Not our standard — your standard
Everyone's body shape and camera position are different, so using a single 'standard good posture' as the reference produces lots of false alarms. That's why we built it so you register 'this is my good posture' yourself, and it judges against that.
I still keep this app running every day. I can't say my posture is perfectly fixed, but at least I spend far fewer hours in tech neck without realizing it.
The core features will stay free going forward. It's a one-person project, so updates can be slow at times, but I use it myself every day and keep improving it.
This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for medical diagnosis or treatment. If pain persists or worsens, consult a medical professional.