The number of ConnectStats users has dropped quite a bit over the years, but about a week ago I started seeing messages on the blog that it had stopped working.
Short version: it works again.
The last time I touched the ConnectStats server was four years and eight months ago (confirmed by my version control history). So when I saw those messages, I panicked — I genuinely didn’t remember how most of it worked. But here’s the thing: over the last few months I’ve fully embraced AI-assisted programming, first with Cursor and now especially my favorite tool, Claude Code.
So while I started looking at my old code and immediately felt overwhelmed, I asked Claude to look at the app code, the server code, and fed it the Garmin documentation for good measure. Within minutes it could walk me through the login workflow, tell me where to set breakpoints to understand the failure, and before long we’d pinpointed the issue: a disk on my server had filled up.
Claude then wrote a script to clean up inactive users — the kind of tedious, nerve-wracking maintenance task I’d been putting off for years. Disk space reclaimed, everything back online.
Even better, Claude now understands the full codebase and has suggested a bunch of cleanup improvements. I might actually start adding features again.
Thanks so much for the update and your advanced approach to maintain this app.This has been my most favorite app I have counted on for monitoring my running for years. I really appreciate that you continue to keep it updated. I know you provide this app for free. I would definitely support paying for a subscription or one time fee. Thanks again
Hab eine frage: kann man einzelne aktivitäten wieder löschen?
Good job, many thanks
Thx so much for all your efforts. For me it has been the best app to consolidate and analyse all my sports in one app. Keep on going. I’d be more than happy to pay
Hi Brice,
I highly appreciate your effort here. Nevertheless, the sync has some bugs as Powermeter Data will just be loaded on a random basis. Meaning, for some activities I do see my powermeter data, for a lot I do not see them. Even if they all had been generated by the same source (using Strava and Garmin Services).
Any idea why that is ?
I would be hard pressed to charge anything given I haven’t had much time to work on it. that said now that I have AI on my side, I’ll see if I can look at some of these issues (power meter etc), but first I need to finish some clean up due to the large amount of data from users that don’t use the apps anymore. I’ll take a look, also ski activities don’t work anymore.
È un’app molto valida, ho avuto qualche problema di connessione questa settimana, spero che tutto funzioni bene di nuovo. Buon lavoro!
Thank you so much Brice. I can confirm that the fix works 🙂
Also, thanks for the insights on how you leveraged Claude.
Out of interest: do you think you could have fixed that quickly with the help of Claude, if the code base would have been entirely new to you? Thanks
That’s a very interesting question. Claude made some suggestions initially that were not right, so a few time I had to lead some questions based on some of my recollection of some the overall code setup. It’s hard to say it would have figured it out fully alone, but my feeling is it would have, it may just have taken a bit more time. It is so impressive from my experience…
Thank you. Great app. AI is impressive
Thanks for the update Brice. I’ve enjoyed using the app for years. Glad to see it working again.
Good News!! Fingers crossed…
This is excellent news—thank you for looking into it and fixing it. I’ve been relying on this app for my training planning and for monitoring my training sessions for several years now. Great to see that it works again.
Ooh, thanks so much Brice! I was really worried there that ConnectStats would finally falter 🙁 Your post is a pain for someone who still insists to live a classic life in Emacs only though, haha. But, ouch, thank you AI for saving the app! Maybe I really need to finally go and check if melpa has something that matches “Claude” — duh…
Thank you again for this update! And greets to your boy!
Claude lives in the terminal so I am feeling right at home with Claude and neovim… I had moved from eMacs to vim some time back already 🙂
Thank you very much, Brice. But I’m devastated because when I uninstalled/reinstalled the app, I lost all my data from before 2020. Is this a limitation of ConnectStats or Garmin? I would really like to have all my stats back.
Garmin disabled the way ConnectStats was getting history. And the new way is a bit involved. That said I already asked Claude for a plan to try to do that, so finger crossed (but may take a bit of time until it’s implemented)
Thank you for keeping working the best running app in the World! Unfortantly my acticoties are still not loadimg. Could you orient me how to proceed?
Thank you thank you thank Brice!!!! It would be amazing to have some comparative analysis whereby one track your health and fitness stats over time. I’m sure Claude will know what to do. Thanks again. I love your app. Regards Steven Kuny (South Africa)