Science-Based Fitness App — Architecture Review

Attendance

Tim Nguyen — Frontend Lead
Mikey Nguyen — Backend Lead
Dan Bui — Research Lead
Andy Trinh — Database Engineer
Ethan Huynh — Project Manager

Agenda

Review system architecture diagram
Decide on API design for the exercise database
Finalize schema for exercises and research citations
Discuss user authentication approach
Assign tasks for next sprint

Unfinished Business

Source list of peer-reviewed studies not yet finalized — Dan to submit a curated list of 20 studies by April 14.
Workout categorization taxonomy still undecided — team to vote asynchronously on the proposed taxonomy before next meeting.

New Business

REST vs GraphQL for the Exercise Database API

The team chose REST for the initial release due to simpler caching and team familiarity. GraphQL will be reconsidered if query flexibility becomes a bottleneck.

Schema for Exercises and Citations

Andy proposed a schema with tables for exercises, muscle groups, research citations (with DOI and study quality rating), and user workout logs. Approved with minor revisions to the citations table.

User Authentication Approach

The team agreed on JWT-based auth with HTTP-only cookies for refresh tokens and short-lived access tokens.

Miscellaneous Comments / Questions / Concerns

Mikey reminded the team that the beta deadline is May 5 and asked everyone to flag blockers in the project board.
Tim raised a concern about keeping the research citation data up to date as new studies are published.

Diagrams

High-level system architecture showing the React frontend, REST API, recommendation engine, and PostgreSQL database — Figure 1: Science-Based Fitness App system architecture overview

Recordings

Audio recording of the meeting

Video recording of the meeting