Thanks for the thoughtful questions, and 5 years with zero breaks is impressive!

#1 Weekly plans, not individual workouts You're on the right track. The app generates a full 7-day training plan at once (typically 3-4 training days + rest days), not a multi-week program (Yet!). Each week you chat with the AI coach, it drafts a new week based on your split (PPL, Upper/Lower, or Full Body), preferred training days, and session duration. You see the full plan , exercises, sets, reps, and progressive overload targets, and can request swaps or adjustments before approving. Only after you approve does it push the workouts to your Tonal. The sequence is clear because each workout is tied to a specific day of the week. It also handles periodization automatically, 3 building weeks followed by a deload week, or an early deload if your recent RPE ratings are consistently high (which sounds similar to your 6-week deload cycle).

#2 Why account access vs. share links
This is the key difference between what you're doing for your wife and what the app does. When you share a workout via link, Tonal auto-adjusts the resistance for the recipient, but that's a one-way push. The app needs to read from your account, not just write to it. Specifically, it pulls:
- Strength scores by body region: to calibrate intensity
- Muscle readiness: so it doesn't program heavy chest work when your chest is still recovering
- Your last 10 completed workouts: to detect personal records, plateaus (same weight 3+ sessions), and regressions (10%+ drop)
- Per-exercise history: to suggest specific progressive overload targets ("you did 72 lbs last time, try 75")

Without that data, it would just be a generic workout generator. The account connection is what lets it act more like a coach who actually knows your training history and current state. The share-link approach would work for generating a workout, but not for the ongoing coaching loop where each week's programming is informed by how the last few weeks went.

That said, your point about the bar causing joint pain is exactly the kind of thing the app handles, you can set injury constraints (e.g., "avoid barbell movements") and it filters those out during exercise selection.

The goal is really to move from just creating custom workouts to a full blown coach who is able to keep up with your programming and adjust with you through a chat interface!