A huge thanks to everyone who tried Pinnacle, commented, challenged us, and shared thoughtful feedback last week
We were excited to finish as the #4 Product of the Day. More importantly, the launch gave us a clear signal about what resonated most.
For anyone new here: Pinnacle turns your iPhone into an AI performance coach. It uses built-in phone sensors, conversation, and wearable data via Apple Health to help you improve focus, resilience, energy, and performance with science-backed tools.
You can download the app here:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pi...
A few things that stood out:
1. People want insight, not just more data
One of the strongest themes in the comments was that raw metrics alone are not enough. People don t want another dashboard full of numbers with no context.
They want to understand:
How am I doing right now?
What is driving it?
What should I do next?
That is a big part of how we think about Pinnacle. The goal is not to flood you with biometrics. The goal is to turn signals from your body and behavior into something actionable in the moment.
2. Low-friction measurement really matters
A lot of people responded to the fact that Pinnacle works from the iPhone you already have, without requiring extra hardware to get started. That convenience matters more than we expected.
Several comments also pushed on an important challenge: accuracy and calibration. They were right to do so.
If you are using phone-based measurement, the system has to adapt to the individual, establish a baseline, and avoid overreacting to noisy signals. That reinforced one of our core beliefs: relative progress from your own baseline is more useful than generic scores.
3. Personalisation has to reflect real life
One of the most useful questions we got was whether brain-performance baselines should account for hormonal cycles. The answer is yes.
If you want to understand focus, energy, and resilience properly, context matters.
Personalisation cannot stop at a single static baseline. It needs to reflect the realities of each user s life, including sleep disruption, parenting, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and cycle-related changes over time.
This is an area we want to keep improving.
4. Coaching works best when it is personalised to state, not just prompts
Another theme was the difference between Pinnacle and a standard LLM.
People have already tried using general AI as a coach, and the common experience is that it still puts too much burden on the user to know what to ask.
What we are building is different: Pinnacle combines conversation with biometric and behavioral context, then guides the right intervention at the right moment.
That might mean breathwork, reflection, a micro-break, or a focused coaching prompt depending on what the system sees.
5. Trust, privacy, and product feel are part of the product
Some of the best questions were about privacy, camera use, and whether the experience feels helpful rather than intrusive.
Those are not side questions. They are central.
We want Pinnacle to feel like a calm, intelligent coach, not another noisy app demanding attention. That means being thoughtful about privacy, clear about how sensing works, and careful about when the product should guide versus when it should get out of the way.
What we re doubling down on now
Better baseline calibration and more personalised scoring
Stronger coaching flows based on both conversation and biometric context
Continued work on attention measurement and training
Better support for more diverse stress and recovery patterns across users
Making the product feel lighter, clearer, and more useful from day one
Launch day was great, but the real value has been seeing which parts of the vision people immediately understood, and which parts we need to explain better.
If you have tried it already, I d love to hear: what clicked for you, and what still feels unclear?
Calm
Pinnacle
Hey Product Hunt, I'm Joel, co-founder of Pinnacle!
The Problem
Our world today is overwhelming. Always-on culture and increasing demands have created an epidemic of stress, fatigue, distraction and burnout. Yet the tools available aren’t built to help people perform at their best under daily pressure.
Therapy is incredibly valuable for mental health support, but it's expensive and geared more towards processing past experiences rather than future-focussed personal growth.
Coaching is more relevant to performance enhancement but still expensive, decentralised and lacking quantified measures to track progress.
Meditation apps teach profound mindfulness practice, but these experiences are impersonal and static, lacking adaption over time or a deep understanding of the user.
Smart Wearables measure your body but don’t measure your mind. Insights are limited to physiological indicators, lacking a more complete psychological picture.
The Pinnacle Solution
Pinnacle turns your iPhone into a tool for understanding and training your mind.
Using the sensors already built into your phone, our AI reads real-time biometrics, interprets your emotional state, and pulls everything together into a clear picture of how you're actually performing.
Instead of raw data, you get simple, actionable insights you can use throughout your day. With Pinnacle, you can track and improve your focus, HRV, emotions, sleep, and overall performance.
Think of Pinnacle as a mirror for your inner world. It surfaces patterns you wouldn’t normally notice and helps you make small, meaningful changes that add up over time, so you can perform better day after day.
For the first time, if you have an iPhone, you can truly quantify and upgrade your mind.
Who is this for?
If you're a knowledge worker experiencing high pressure and feeling stressed, fatigued or distracted, Pinnacle helps you build resilience and thrive under pressure. Upgrade your brain with Pinnacle.
Get started today
From today, the Product Hunt community gets access to Pinnacle Core for free. Try Pinnacle at pinnacle.co and see what you can achieve.
In the future, Pinnacle will start charging a monthly subscription. If you love Pinnacle, please message us directly with PHLOVE. The first 50 folks to do that before Saturday March 14th will get their first year of Pinnacle Core for free.
@joel_jackson1 Love this, and congrats. Just a simple que for you; how does Pinnacle turn raw iPhone sensor data (like mic for HRV?) into reliable emotional insights without extra hardware, and what's one early user pattern you've seen boost resilience most?
Pinnacle
@swati_paliwal emotional insights are generated through conversations with the LLM. We use HRV and other wearable data to understand the physiological indicators are correlated with your emotional state to provide the optimal training path for you.
In terms of user patterns, we have noticed users often start with high level goals like "Improve output at work", but through progressive conversations and measurements realize the underlying root cause like "lack of stress resilience" and that's when they see a step function change in their performance.
Tobira.ai
@joel_jackson1 Congrats on the launch! Curious whether the brain performance baselines account for hormonal cycles. For women, focus and energy patterns shift significantly across the month. Is that something Pinnacle factors in?
Pinnacle
Tobira.ai
@rishab_mehra That's cool, Rishab!
Pinnacle
@mahima_jain1 Hi Mahima, it's great to have you on the Pinnacle system - I am glad you enjoy the app.
If you're open to sharing, it would be great to learn about a particular scenario where Pinnacle helped you with your energy or anxiety!
Pinnacle
Pinnacle
@mahima_jain1 makes sense - in newer versions, you can also connect your wearable data through Apple Health and measure sleep objectively along side the performance score!
Pinnacle
@mahima_jain1 Great to hear Pinnacle has been a support you overtime and you've enjoyed tracking your progress towards your goal through the performance score and psychological measures within the app. As your performance coach its also fantastic to hear the system is replicating coaching.
Calibrating to a personal baseline is a good design decision. I've used apps that tell me my focus score is "72" with no context for whether that's good or bad for me specifically. Relative improvement from my own starting point is a much more useful signal.
How are you using the iPhone sensors for brain measurement? I'm curious whether it's HRV-based (which correlates with cognitive readiness) or something else. And do the breathwork exercises adapt based on what the sensors detect, or is the exercise library more of a fixed menu that you recommend from?
Pinnacle
AngelList Radio - Rick Marini
have been an early user! I'm impressed with how far its come. The interface and interaction is sci-fi and love the HRV and emotional detection features. What's next on the roadmap?
Pinnacle
@sumon_sadhu it's been great having you as a beta user Sumon - you've really helped shape the direction of this company.
Next up we are bringing our attention tracking into the production system! Can't wait for a wider audience to be able to measure and train their focus objectively day after day.
Pinnacle
@sumon_sadhu Thank you for the feedback! We really appreciate your thoughts on our HRV tracking and emotional detection features. You input has been very valuable throughout the journey. As you’ve experienced through the coaching at Pinnacle, the system builds a profile over time to better understand each user, enabling more personalised insights and now coaching directly through the app.
Pinnacle
Thanks @sumon_sadhu. Your feedback has been invaluable in helping to shape the product. More exciting things to come! 🙌
Love the concept. I’ve tried prompting chatgpt to be my coach but it hasn’t led to great results. What’s your approach that’s differentiated from existing LLMs?
Pinnacle
@upasna_mehta This is a great question, and an important one for Pinnacle. We empower the LLM with multiple layers of biometric and performance-related data, psychological analysis and a sophisticated framework of science-backed coaching tools which other platforms don't have access to. The result is a system which has a deep understanding of what peak performance means for you, and has the methods to get you there.
Pinnacle
Hi @upasna_mehta. Thanks for the feedback! Jumping in on the design/UX side of Chris's point—the biggest difference is 'agency.'
When you prompt a standard LLM, the burden is on you to know what to ask. We designed Pinnacle to remove that cognitive load. It doesn't wait for a prompt; it uses those biometric and performance signals to 'lean in' at the right moment.
Think of it like the difference between a textbook (ChatGPT) and a coach standing next to you (Pinnacle). One has the information, the other has the context of your current state. This is what Pinnacle offers that other LLMs currently do not.
Pinnacle
@upasna_mehta we've spent the last year with our performance director, Neil, to develop an architecture around coaching framework. Our AI system uses this architecture to inform LLMs, rather than prompting them directly, leading to a much more smooth coaching conversation!
Using the iPhone's built-in camera for HRV measurement without requiring a wearable removes a huge adoption barrier — most brain performance tools fail because they add hardware friction before delivering any value. With the attention tracking feature coming soon, how are you thinking about privacy given that it likely requires continuous camera access during work sessions?
Pinnacle
@svyat_dvoretski We've worked hard to break down any friction in our performance measurement tools. Privacy is a key concern with Pinnacle. All image processing takes place on device, and only the distilled performance data is retained. We're always upfront about when and why we are using capture devices.
Pinnacle
@svyat_dvoretski attention tracking is a one off test where you can track how well you can manage your inherent attention rather than concentrating on a task.
Blockem Profiles
Nice launch! Tools that focus on improving real workplace interactions are always interesting to see. I’m curious how the AI balances providing guidance while still keeping conversations natural and unobtrusive.
Pinnacle
@angelaaa That insight is spot on. The hardest part of building the system was finding that balance: guiding users toward the right tools while respecting their original intent, all without making the interaction feel force-fitted.
Do let us know what you think about the level of "push" vs "pull" once you try the system!
@angelaaa @rishab_mehra Built biometric features before. Pinnacle's phone-as-brain-coach approach makes sense, but individual variance is where it gets tricky... what registers as stress on one person is just noise for another. Getting baselines right before any nudging is what separates helpful from annoying.
Pinnacle
@angelaaa @piroune_balachandran 100% agree here. Our system focuses entirely on relative improvement - measuring progress from your unique starting point. Both physiological indicators like HRV and psychological indictors like emotional state are deeply personal. We calibrate to your baseline to ensure our guidance meets you exactly where you are.
Do try the product and let us know what you thought about this aspect of the system!
Pinnacle
@angelaaa @rishab_mehra @piroune_balachandran thanks for the insightful comment, very valid. The individualised assessments from the HRV in a quantitative dimension are coupled with the reflective insights through voice. The combination of these provides a performance score making the system robust and also linking physiological responses directly to psychological process. Baseline changes over time capture by 'performance score' have been shown to be stable and provide insight into stress responses within the particular context of the user and more importantly how users are adapting improving performance. Please do let us know how you find Pinnacle, and thanks again for the insight.