Builder Story: Kaleen Canevari

"I have a lot more confidence that I'm building thoughtfully and sequentially."

Background: The Pilates Founder

From Engineer to Pilates Tech Founder

Kaleen Canevari is a two-time founder and mechanical engineer with deep expertise in the Pilates industry. Though not a professional coder, she embraces the "vibe coding" movement, using AI-powered tools to build applications that solve real-world problems. As a certified Pilates instructor, Kaleen operates at the intersection of fitness, wellness, and technology.

A New Way of Building

Kaleen describes herself as a "vibe coder." She doesn't focus on the nuances of syntax but excels at outlining a vision and using AI tools to translate it into functional code. She has experience with no-code/low-code platforms, integrating backend services like Supabase, and using version control with Git.

Identifying a Gap in the Market

Kaleen is developing a software platform to address the needs of Pilates studio owners who are unhappy with the current options for hosting and monetizing their online content. One of her initial design partners, a studio owner with a large Instagram following, was specifically looking for a better way to monetize her content for a non-local audience.

Vision: A Platform for Modern Studios

The Product: An AI-Powered Hub for Instructors

Kaleen is building a multi-tenant AI SaaS platform where Pilates studio owners can host their own video content and manage client subscriptions. It provides a dedicated, seamless portal for Pilates instructors to build and manage their own online content business. It solves the problem of studios having to manually manage payments and use generic video platforms like Vimeo, offering a more professional and integrated solution for both studio owners and their students.

Visit www.motrastudio.com.

The Goal: Scaling a Viable Business

The application includes a complex payment system using Stripe Connect, which allows studio owners to receive payments directly from their students while also paying a platform fee. The long-term vision is to become a growing business, and help Pilates pros earn more money without working more hours.

The Turning Point: Choosing BrainGrid

The Challenge: When AI Coders Hit a Wall

Before using BrainGrid, Kaleen's process was less structured. While building a feature to analyze class transcripts with an LLM, she broke the application and couldn't fix it, even after multiple attempts with her existing AI tools. She struggled with the AI losing context or not fully understanding her requirements and noted that integrating third-party services like the OpenAI API was a significant hurdle.

The Solution: An "AI Tech Lead" to Guide the Build

Kaleen turned to BrainGrid to bring more structure and confidence to her building process. The platform has transformed her workflow by acting as an "AI tech lead." She uses it to meticulously plan new features, leveraging its ability to ask clarifying questions to consider aspects of the product she might have otherwise missed. She calls the quality of the product requirements it generates "fantastic," requiring very few edits.

A key success story was rebuilding the broken transcript-analysis feature. She recounted:

“I spent a couple of days — which in vibe coder time felt like eons — spinning in circles trying to integrate this transcript-analysis feature. I tried rebuilding it twice without BrainGrid, and every time something broke. Finally, I decided to start fresh with BrainGrid. I had it rebuild the whole thing from scratch, and it just worked. Right away. It was such a relief.”

Outcomes: Building with Confidence and Speed

New Capabilities: From Guesswork to Guardrails

With BrainGrid, Kaleen can confidently tackle and successfully build complex features that she previously struggled with. She is learning the value of a structured software development lifecycle. BrainGrid provides the guardrails and best practices—like detailed requirements and sequential task breakdowns—that she, as a non-traditional coder, didn't know she needed. It's teaching her "how to vibe like a pro" by instilling a more rigorous planning process.

Tangible Results: From Broken Features to Paying Customers

The most significant result is a tangible increase in building success. Since adopting BrainGrid, Kaleen has:

• Successfully implemented a complex feature to parse class transcripts using an LLM.
• Integrated Stripe Connect to handle multi-party payments.
• Deployed her application to Vercel.
• Onboarded her first paying studio owner.

Features that were previously broken are now working flawlessly, and the quality of her initial planning is much higher.

As Kaleen puts it, using BrainGrid:

"gives me a lot more confidence that I'm building thoughtfully and sequentially."

Check out Motra Studio at www.motrastudio.com.