Alternator

Inspiration

The modern paradox: we have thousands of followers but have never been lonelier. We wanted to solve the epidemic of social isolation by moving people away from passive scrolling and back toward active, synchronous human connection.

What it does

LatentTies uses a dual-agent architecture to revive fading friendships. A secure Offline Agent monitors your calendar for free time, while an Online Agent synthesizes mutually authorized public feeds for shared interests. When timing and interests align, it uses Claude to draft a contextual icebreaker and invites both friends into a "Creative Co-op" to learn a new skill together.

How we built it

We used a Node.js/Bootstrap stack for rapid prototyping. We simulated the secure data streams and integrated the Anthropic API to dynamically generate the contextual, low-pressure icebreaker messages and power the AI Mentor persona in the Co-op space.

Challenges we ran into

Balancing powerful matchmaking with strict privacy. We realized early on that "scraping" social data felt invasive, so we completely pivoted our architecture to an explicit "mutual opt-in" framework to ensure 100% ethical alignment and user control. Also, racing against the 3-hour hackathon clock!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully built a functional prototype that calls the Anthropic API and tackles a massive mental health challenge. We're incredibly proud of our ethical framework that protects data while fostering deep, meaningful peer support.

What we learned

We learned that AI isn't just for automating routine work—it can act as a powerful orchestrator for human empathy. We also learned the importance of focusing on user consent as a core feature, not just an afterthought.

What's next for Alternator

We plan to build out the live Google Calendar OAuth integration, expand the library of AI "Expert Personas" for the collaborative learning studios, and port the web dashboard into a native mobile app for real-time notifications.