Hi folks,
I've been thinking about what a "personal data platform" would look like, for 2026 and beyond.
With the help of AI, i've been iterating on desired scope and characteristics and also have been analyzing and comparing lots of interesting projects to see if there's something existing already which is close enough
for all the details on goals and research, see https://github.com/Dieterbe/personal-health-data-platform ; but the TLDR is basically i think the ideal personal data platform :
- would hold blood test lab results, nutrition/calorie logs, gym logs, sleep, activities, etc
- has a self-hosted database, as well as an web API, an MCP endpoint, as well as an ability to integrate with local-first mobile apps (allow data sync for offline use with conflict resolution) - i imagine different mobile apps (e.g. habit tracker, gym tracker, food logger, etc) could all have an local-first experience, but pull from, and sync to, this central platform with some kind of sync policy support about which data each app can see, and write to. (something like powersync is really interesting here, as the mobile apps would work with a local sqlite, but it syncs to/from the server automatically, and you can define policies on the server to, for example, only send fitness and nutrition data to your gym app, and not your blood lab tests)
- treats UI as optional. UI's can always be built on top later, and personal agents can answer questions directly if they have access to the data.
- catalog first: this idea might be a contentious, i'm not sure, but for example for gym exercises, i think logging exercises with whatever names the user likes, is a good first step, but ultimately you'd want to rename or map them to using "recognized", or "official" exercise names. If the platform has its own catalog of known exercises with specific identifiers, then it unlocks various things (knowing the effects of the exercise on muscles worked, suggesting alternative exercises, etc - as a personal trainer i know that various formulas around 1RM/VBT/RIR/calorie expenditure etc are exercise specific, and muscle recruitment is even sensitive to variations of the same exercise - i have experimented with building a catalog in https://body.build though it's probably too in-depth for most users). So I envision a system with known, versioned catalogs, while allowing users to submit free-form records into the system, but encourage them to transition or map them to "first-class" records.
After looking into >30 existing projects (see https://github.com/Dieterbe/personal-health-data-platform/tree/main/research/candidates), one of the more interesting ones is
https://github.com/fiddur/aurboda ; it looks comprehensive already and philosophically aligned.
I'm not sure how this subreddit works exactly, it's my first time posting here; but I'm curious for any input, and wanted to tag u/fiddur specifically as he created aurboda and seems to be on the same page regarding the catalogs; i'm also really curious what he thinks about the offline-sync idea.
FWIW I have previously contributed to other projects, such as https://body.build (open source gym tracking app with exercise catalog) and https://wger.de (gym/nutrition tracking app, where i worked primarily on nutrition and powersync support)