# Touch Grass Coach: An AI Outdoor Fitness Trainer Powered by Gemma & ElevenLabs

> Source: <https://dev.to/moroabdullatif/touch-grass-coach-an-ai-outdoor-fitness-trainer-powered-by-gemma-elevenlabs-3ah8>
> Published: 2026-10-11 17:55:20+00:00

*This is a submission for the [Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass](https://dev.to/challenges/hacktoberfest-week1-2026-10-05)*

I built **Touch Grass Coach**, a minimalist, screen-free outdoor fitness web app designed to get people out of the gym and into the fresh air. Instead of staring at a phone screen while working out, users tap "Start Session," pocket their devices, and receive dynamic, real-time voice coaching powered by open-weight AI and ultra-realistic voice synthesis.

Open innovation and open-weight models like Gemma make it possible to run lightweight, customizable reasoning locally or flexibly without locking developers into rigid, expensive cloud ecosystems. For a fitness application, this opens the door to complete data privacy and edge-based processing—meaning future iterations can run entirely offline at any local park without relying on heavy cloud servers.