Social scheduling for gyms and studios

The idea

Studio owners know Instagram fills classes and still go dark for weeks, because after coaching six sessions nobody has creative energy left for a caption. The horizontal schedulers — five of them, priced $12-33/mo — all drew lukewarm verdicts from the crowd: users keep paying but clearly want out. A scheduler with a blank compose box does not solve the studio owner’s problem, because the blank box is the problem.

The wedge is generating from their data instead of asking them to compose. The class schedule already exists in Mindbody; member PRs happen every week; the monthly challenge is on the whiteboard. Feed those in and the week’s posts write themselves in the studio’s tone, with branded schedule cards and PR graphics rendered automatically. That justifies charging above Buffer, not below it — the owner is buying output, not a queue.

Who pays

The buyer is the owner-operator of a single-location gym, yoga studio, or CrossFit box, paying $29/mo — an easy trade against a $500/mo social media freelancer or the guilt of not posting. Multi-location and franchise operators take the $79 tier. Distribute through fitness-business podcasts and Facebook groups, Mindbody and booking-platform ecosystems, and content targeting gym social media ideas searches.

MVP scope

• Onboarding with brand kit, tone choice, and class schedule import (CSV plus paste)
• Weekly auto-generated queue of 4-6 posts with Claude copy and templated branded images
• Member shoutout inbox via typed entry or SMS
• Approve/edit flow and publishing to Instagram and Facebook via Meta Graph API
• Skip for v1: TikTok and Google Business Profile posting, booking-platform scraping, engagement analytics, DM replies

Build StudioPost, a social autopilot for gyms, yoga studios, and CrossFit boxes. Stack: Next.js (App Router) on Vercel, Claude API for post generation, Meta Graph API for publishing to Instagram and Facebook, Supabase for auth, Postgres, and image storage.

Core flow: onboarding asks for the studio's vibe (three tone choices), brand colors, logo, and their content sources — class schedule (paste it, upload a CSV, or connect a public Mindbody/booking-page URL to scrape weekly), plus recurring content types: class spotlights, coach intros, member shoutouts and PRs (typed in or texted to a dedicated number), monthly challenges, and holiday hours. Every Sunday the app generates the coming week: 4-6 posts mixing schedule-driven content (Monday 6am HIIT has 3 spots left energy, but factual) with evergreen prompts. Each post gets Claude-written copy in the studio's tone and a branded image card rendered from templates (schedule graphics, PR announcement cards, quote cards) using satori or node-canvas.

Owner reviews a week-view queue, swipes to approve or edit, and approved posts publish via Meta Graph API at optimal times. Screens: onboarding wizard, weekly queue, content sources, brand kit, post history with basic engagement pulls.

Non-obvious details: schedule scraping needs a per-booking-platform selector map with a manual CSV fallback; never invent member names — shoutouts only from owner-submitted entries.

Pricing: $29/mo single location, $79/mo for 3+, 14-day trial, Stripe billing.