Inspiration
We noticed how overwhelming it can get when thoughts, emotions, and decisions pile up. Instead of bottling things in, we wanted to create an AI companion that helps people untangle their minds, gain perspective, and feel supported — like having a coach, a therapist, and a future self all in one.
What it does
AI Buddy offers four key tools:
Thought Unknotter: Turns messy thoughts into clear flowcharts with Mermaid.js.
Future Self Chat: Lets you talk to a wiser version of yourself for guidance.
Recommendations: Analyzes your mood and suggests videos, books, or movies.
Guided Simulations: Immersive, AI-driven mental fitness adventures to build resilience.\
How we built it
Frontend: React + CSS, with Mermaid.js for flowcharts.
Backend: FastAPI with Pydantic for validation.
AI Models: Google Gemma 2 9B (via OpenRouter) and LLaMA 3.1 8B (via Groq).
Integration: Prompt engineering for structured outputs, axios for API calls.
Challenges we ran into
Ensuring structured JSON outputs from LLMs was tricky.
Balancing between empathy and utility in the Future Self Chat.
Debugging Mermaid.js parsing errors and handling edge cases.
Deploying both frontend and backend smoothly within the hackathon time limit.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Built four fully working features under one unified app.
Designed prompts that generate consistent, usable outputs from two different LLM providers.
Created a flowchart-based thought untangling tool that feels genuinely helpful.
Made something that’s not just techy, but also emotionally meaningful.
What we learned
How to engineer prompts for reliability across different AI providers.
The importance of visual clarity in reducing mental clutter.
That building for mental wellness requires empathy, not just code.
Learned to work as a team under tight deadlines while switching seamlessly between frontend and backend tasks.
What's next for AI Buddy
Add voice-based input and output for more natural interactions.
Build a mobile version for daily accessibility.
Expand recommendations with Spotify, Goodreads, and podcast integrations.
Improve simulations with branching storylines and gamified progress tracking.
Deploy a production-ready cloud version that anyone can use securely.
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