Show HN: An app that logs your meal's calories from a photo

behzodhalil 11 points 17 comments July 30, 2026
btrapp.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (7 comments)

behzodhalil

Hi, HN I kept giving up on calorie tracking because trying in every meal was too much work. So I tried building something where I just take a photo and it estimates what’s on the plate. It’s honestly not perfect - it does well with simple meals and gets confused by messy or mixed plates, so you can always correct it. But for me it lowered the friction enough that I actually kept logging. Under the hood it’s a vision model for the food recognition, wrapped in Kotlin Multiplatform (iOS and Android) with a small Ktor backed. I’d love feedback - especially where the recognition fails for you, so I can see the real edge cases. Thanks for checking it out.

levi840714

What do you do about portion size, and the calories a photo can't see like oil or dressing? Those are the parts that have always made me distrust the number these apps spit out. Curious how you're handling it. Only looked at the landing page so far.

astaka

Some other similar apps do the same thing but it's hard to provdie right and accruate inforation just based on photos by using LLM & OCR. any special design you did in this app?

kingleopold

another BS apps after 100 made the same thing. maybe 1000 made before

sifarhub_com

the app looks same or similar to fitness apps. As myself I found the apps difficult in managing while doing exercises because you have to constantly do this in phone. I prefer not to .So build something where it would not require manual efforts or minimum manual effort.

interfeco

looks like even the apple logo in the appstore button is vibecoded.

xingped

sigh will you nerds please stop trying to make this app idea happen, it doesn't work.

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