LeanPawgress

Inspiration

What it does

How we built it

Challenges we ran into

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

What's next for LeanPawgress

Inspiration

• Logging pet weight/food is clunky; answering “can my pet eat ___?” is harder than it should be. We wanted a fun, safe, super-simple tool.

What it does

• Create owners/pets, log weights & meals, set goals.
• Add foods by grams with auto kcal.
• Toxicity check (dog/cat) before logging.
• Add your own brands (saved locally) and use them from the dropdown.
• Status cards show today’s calories, goals, and latest weight.

How we built it

• Node + Express to serve a vanilla JS SPA.
• ES-module models: Owner, Pet, WeightEntry, MealEntry.
• Data: food-catalog.json + poisons.json; user brands in localStorage (merged/overridden on load).
• UI: HTML/CSS (grid, micro-animations), Font Awesome, Poppins.

Challenges

• Normalizing kcal/kg → cal/g and avoiding NaN.
• Merging base + user catalogs with stable IDs.
• Species-specific toxicity matching & clear prompts.
• Keeping HTML IDs and handlers in sync.

Accomplishments

• Friendly UX with real safety guardrails.
• Personal catalog with instant dropdown integration (★ marking).
• Clean separation of data vs UI; easy to extend.

Learnings

• Normalize inputs early; UI stays simple.
• Small confirmations/messages reduce friction.
• Vanilla JS can feel “app-like” with light structure.

What’s next

• Optional cloud sync & backups.
• Barcode/photo nutrition import.
• Charts & weekly insights.
• Reminders (weigh-ins, feeding).
• Accessibility, i18n, and more vetted food data.

Built With

• css3
• express.js
• html5
• javascript
• node.js