An Indian software developer has revealed that vibe-coded an app to track his recovery after he was suddenly struck by Bell’s palsy — a condition that causes temporary facial paralysis. Ali Mustufa, a senior developer advocate at Pieces AI, was in Singapore last week “having the best time of his life”, blissfully unaware that he would soon be unable to move the right side of his face.
“As soon as I returned to Bombay, things changed. I had to go to the emergency room because my right side was starting to fail, especially my face,” he revealed in a video shared on X.
Mustufa had been struck by Bell’s palsy, a condition that causes sudden weakness in the muscles on one side of the face. The condition is usually short-term and improves over months. Recovery requires facial exercises and physical therapy to regain muscle strength.
Mumbai man vibe-codes app
Since Bell’s palsy recovery depends heavily on consistent facial physiotherapy exercises over weeks or months, Mustufa wanted a way to make that process more measurable and collaborative with his physiotherapist.
He decided to build an app that could measure his progress. To build the app, he relied on AI. In a post shared on X, Mustufa explained that he used OpenAI’s coding agent Codex, along with Anthropic’s Claude, to build Mirror — an AI-powered rehabilitation tool designed to help with recovery.
{{/usCountry}}He decided to build an app that could measure his progress. To build the app, he relied on AI. In a post shared on X, Mustufa explained that he used OpenAI’s coding agent Codex, along with Anthropic’s Claude, to build Mirror — an AI-powered rehabilitation tool designed to help with recovery.
{{/usCountry}}“I vibe-coded my way out and built an AI face tracking app that guides my facial exercises, measures facial symmetry in real time, and tracks my progress,” he said.
Alongside the post, he shared a video explaining how the app works. The video shows him speaking with some difficulty as the right side of his face is still paralysed.
What does Mirror do?
Ali Mustufa’s Mirror is an app that records and analyses his facial exercises and sends reports to his physiotherapist.
“Mirror helps you if you have a condition like Bell's palsy, it helps you to do exercises and also evaluate them based on the symmetry on the left side of your face to the right side of the face,” he explained in his video.
“Now, it just doesn't stop there. It also allows you to record each day and each exercise and also create a comprehensive report for the physio to be able to review the exercises and provide feedback,” Mustufa revealed.
How does the app track recovery?
A major feature of the app is its progress tracking system. Every time a user performs an exercise, the app records the session duration and evaluates how symmetrical the facial movements are. For example, if the user performs a smiling exercise or raises their eyebrows, the app measures how closely the affected side of the face matches the healthy side.
(Also read: Indian techie with 5 YOE feels ‘irrelevant, useless’ after using Claude AI)
The system also creates visual timelapses of recovery over time. Users can replay recorded frames from previous sessions to visually compare facial movements across days or weeks. This helps patients actually see their improvement instead of relying only on memory or subjective observation.
How the internet reacted
Mustufa’s post reached thousands of X users who praised him and his initiative. He also received several offers of help.
Vaibhav Srivastav, an OpenAI executive, offered to hook him up with a ChatGPT subscription “so that you can try and experiment with even more novel solutions like this”.
“Good luck Ali - my dad is a retired Neurotologist who worked with a lot of Bell’s Palsy patients. I can ask if he has any other advice for you,” wrote X user Brent Brookler.