AI Coach — How It Works and How to Use It

MotionEdge's AI Coach is the layer that takes everything the app sees — your video, your pose data, your tempo, hand path, TrackMan radar numbers, Watch metrics — and turns it into the kind of explanation a knowledgeable friend at the range would give you. It uses Claude or Grok behind the scenes (you can pick), it has access to the full context of your swing, and it converses with you the same way you'd talk to a coach.

What makes it feel more like a real coaching relationship than a chatbot is that it remembers. Every swing you've captured, every metric, every TrackMan number, every cue that worked or didn't — it carries that context forward into the next conversation and reasons across all of it when you ask a question. Over time it builds a model of you as a golfer: your tendencies, your focus areas, what kind of feedback lands for you. You can see and edit everything it remembers from Settings → AI Coach → Memory.

The honest framing: it's a powerful second opinion, not a replacement for a great instructor in person. But it sees more measurements per swing than any coach can, and it actually remembers them. That combination is genuinely useful.

Where AI Coach lives in the app

There are two surfaces. They look different but they're the same engine underneath:

The conversations sync between the two — start a question in the panel while reviewing a swing, continue it in the AI Coach tab later that night. Same history, same context.

What the AI Coach actually sees

When you ask a question, MotionEdge sends the AI provider a curated payload — not just your video. Depending on what's available on the swing(s) in question, that includes:

• Frames from your swing video — typically the filmstrip's 10 key positions (address, top, impact, etc.). Not the full video, just the moments that matter.
• Pose landmarks — joint positions per frame, computed on your device by the pose engine. Lets the AI talk about your hip position, shoulder rotation, spine angle, etc., not just "what the video shows."
• Measured metrics — tempo ratio, hand path grade, peak hand speed, release quality, spine tilt, kinematic sequence score, and the rest.
• TrackMan radar data — when present, ball speed, launch angle, club path, face angle, spin, the full set.
• Apple Watch data — when present, hand speed, tempo, release metrics from the IMU.
• Your training profile — if you've set one up, the AI knows what you're working on (e.g., "shallow the transition") and frames feedback accordingly.
• Your swing history — recent swings and what was said about them, so the AI doesn't repeat itself or contradict prior coaching cues.

The more data a swing has, the more specific the AI can be. A swing with just video gets fewer concrete numbers than a swing that also has TrackMan and Watch attached.

How to start an analysis

From the AI Coach tab

Tap the AI Coach tab in the bottom bar. The tab opens with your conversation history and a text input at the bottom. Type a question, optionally tap the swing/swings you want it to consider, and send. The AI responds inline in the conversation.

From inside Video Review

Open a swing. In the panel system at the top, switch any panel to AI Analysis. The panel shows the swing's current AI analysis (if one exists) plus a text input for follow-up questions. Asking from here is identical to asking from the tab — except the swing context is implicit (the AI knows you're looking at this specific swing).

Deep Analyze — the one-tap option

For a fresh, comprehensive analysis of a single swing, use Deep Analyze (a button in the AI Analysis panel and on the swing detail view). This sends a curated package — frames + pose + metrics + TrackMan + Watch + your training profile + recent-swing history — and asks the provider for a full critique. Takes a few seconds, costs an API call. Use it once per swing you genuinely care about, not as a per-swing default.

Provider choice — Claude or Grok

You can pick which AI provider answers your questions in Settings → AI Coach. Both are good. Anecdotally:

• Claude tends toward longer, more nuanced, more careful explanations. Great for "explain this concept to me" questions.
• Grok tends toward more direct, terser answers. Often better for "what's wrong with this swing — give me the one thing to fix."

There's no wrong answer. Try both on the same swing and use whichever style fits how you like coaching to land.

What to ask — questions that produce good answers

The AI Coach is genuinely useful when you ask specific, golf-language questions about a swing or a pattern across swings. Examples that work well:

• "Compare this swing to my session 10 days ago. What changed?"
• "Why is my hand path grading yellow on most of my recent driver swings?"
• "I'm trying to shallow my transition. What does my last 5 swings tell you about whether I'm getting closer?"
• "My club path on TrackMan is reading -3 degrees but my face is square. What's that doing to my ball flight?"
• "Compare this to a tour swing I imported. What's the biggest difference at P3?"

Questions that produce weaker answers (because they're too vague):

• "How's my swing?" → you'll get a generic answer
• "Make me a better golfer" → not specific enough to anchor in your actual data
• "Is this swing good?" → the AI doesn't know your goal

The trick: give the AI a frame of reference (compared to what? working on what? from which angle?). Better question = better answer.

Where your coaching data lives — and what we don't keep

The short version: your coaching data lives on your device. We don't store any of it on our servers.

The longer version is worth reading once, because the precision matters:

• On your device. Your conversation history, your AI Coach's memory of your swings, and the model it builds of you as a golfer all live in MotionEdge's local database on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. You can read and edit any of it from Settings → AI Coach → Memory.
• In your own private iCloud, when you have it on. With iCloud Sync enabled, your coaching memory syncs between your devices through Apple's private CloudKit container. That's your iCloud — encrypted, tied to your Apple ID, not visible to us. It's the same plumbing Apple uses for your Photos and Notes.
• Not on MotionEdge's servers. We do not run a central database of your coaching conversations, your memory, your swings, or any of your training data. Our AI proxy (which routes your questions to the AI provider you've chosen) logs only billing metadata — device identifier, timestamp, model, token counts — so we can manage AI costs and quotas. It does not log your prompts, the AI's responses, or any swing data. Those metadata records expire automatically.

When you ask a question, MotionEdge does send a curated payload to the AI provider you've chosen (Anthropic for Claude, xAI for Grok). It includes the frames, pose data, and metrics for the swing(s) you're asking about, plus the relevant slice of what the coach remembers about you — just what's needed to answer this question, not your whole history. A couple of specifics worth knowing:

• Your name and email are never sent to the AI provider. They see anonymous swing data and the coaching context tied to it.
• Frames go up only for swings you reference. If you ask "compare these two swings," frames for both go up. The AI doesn't fish through your history on its own.
• Each call to the provider stands alone. The provider doesn't hold onto your previous conversations across requests. The relevant context is assembled fresh by MotionEdge on your device and included in that one call. Anthropic's and xAI's data policies apply to that call.

So you get the best of both worlds: the depth of a real AI coaching relationship, with the privacy of a notebook that never leaves your devices. If you'd rather not send any swing data to a cloud AI provider at all, simply don't use the AI Coach features — every other part of MotionEdge runs on-device with no network calls.

AI Coach credits and AI Coach Packs

AI Coach is part of MotionEdge Pro. Your Pro subscription includes a generous monthly allowance of AI Coach conversations — enough for typical practice and review use without thinking about it. Your monthly quota resets at the start of each month.

If you're in an unusually heavy stretch — lots of Deep Analyze calls, multi-swing comparisons every session — you can buy an AI Coach Pack from Settings → AI Coach to extend your quota. AI Coach Packs are one-time purchases (not a subscription) that sit in a wallet on your account. They're only consumed after your monthly quota is fully used, and each Pack is valid for one year from the date of purchase. Full mechanics in AI Coach Packs — How They Work and When to Buy One.

If you share your Pro subscription via Apple Family Sharing, your AI Coach credits — and any AI Coach Pack purchases — pool across the whole family. One monthly allowance, one shared Pack wallet, the whole household. See Practicing Golf as a Family for how that works.

We don't publish the exact monthly credit allowance as a number because the right limits will evolve as we learn how people actually use the AI Coach. The practical answer: if you ever hit the limit, you'll see a clear in-app message with a one-tap Buy AI Coach Pack option to keep going.

The Tier 3 swing recap — what it is and why you might see it

After most AI analyses, MotionEdge automatically saves a swing recap — a few-line summary of what the AI said about that swing: the primary observation, the fault domain (if any), the cue the AI gave you, and whether the observation is transferable to similar swings.

You'll see recaps in:

• The swing's detail view (a section labelled "AI Coach notes")
• Quick scrubbing across recent swings — the recap shows up alongside metrics so you can scan-read what each swing's AI commentary said without re-running the analysis
• Future AI Coach conversations — the AI remembers what it told you, so it can build on prior feedback instead of repeating itself

Recaps are silent — they happen automatically; you don't need to opt in. If a swing has a recap, it shows. If not, it doesn't.

Best practices

• Run Deep Analyze on swings that matter — not every swing. Once per genuinely interesting swing.
• Reference specific things in your questions — a metric name, a swing position, a feel you're working on. The more anchor, the more specific the answer.
• Read the recap before asking a follow-up — if the AI already told you "your spine tilt loss is the priority," don't ask "what should I work on?" — ask the next-level question.
• Try both providers for the same question once. You'll learn which voice fits you.
• Use the AI Coach tab for project-level questions ("how is my swing change going?") and the panel for swing-specific drilling.

What the AI Coach is not

To set expectations honestly:

• It's not a real-time swing critic. It analyzes after capture, not during.
• It's not a substitute for an in-person instructor for fundamentals. A good coach watching you hit balls catches things no AI does — grip pressure, tension, the way your eyes move at address, the rhythm of your routine, whether you're cheating around back pain.
• It's not infallible. It can be wrong. Treat it like a second opinion you can engage with, not an oracle.
• Memory is per-user, not shared. Your coaching memory belongs to your Apple ID. Even on swings shared with someone else (like your instructor), each person has their own AI Coach memory — what your coach remembers about you isn't visible to them.

Within those limits, it's the most consistently available "person at the range with a brain" you can have — and it has access to numbers no human can hold in their head.

See also: Live TrackMan Connection for radar data that improves AI answers. Apple Watch Overview for Watch sensor data the AI uses. Tempo Ratio and Hand Path Grading for two of the metrics the AI references most often.