Grappling sports are the most fun and physically challenging sports bar none, as well as offering a unique mental challenge. I've been thinking about how to best represent grappling techniques online for years now. I won a match at the state championships for white belts, and I've practised for around a year cumulatively. I've also been a software engineer for over 4 years, and previously worked on projects like Elo BJJ. I think I'm part of a small group that has insight into this specific area.
Most practitioners agree that the only way to learn BJJ is through a good teacher, gym, and rolling partners. I think the common misconception is that online resources are useless, or only useful as a substitute. I think this is accurate now, but will change. Software could accelerate practitioner improvement speed, and create better practitioners. It could allow people to discover new moves, learn variations, and understand their sport and art better. I think if I don't make this, someone else inevitably will, as BJJ continues to grow in popularity.
I made a proof-of-concept for a directed graph, with techniques as vertexes, and representing variations using modular decomposition: grapplebook-frontend.pages.dev. If you go to single leg takedown, you will see the grip sub-variations. Each technique can also have tags and categorisations.
I think there's still a lot of room for a better grappling knowledge base and learning companion software. If you're interested in this space, either as a grappling practitioner or software engineer, I'd love to chat, so shoot me a message on one of my socials.