Inspiration
Aurora Market was inspired by the need to make online shopping safer and smarter. I wanted to explore how AI could identify unusual purchasing behaviour, enforce spending limits, and prevent potentially risky transactions without making shopping complicated.
What it does
Aurora Market is an AI-powered shopping platform with an intelligent payment firewall. It uses Llama 3.2 to analyse purchase intent and assess risk. Combined with security rules for spending limits and restricted categories, it can approve, flag for human review, or block purchases. Approved purchases can proceed to PayPal Sandbox checkout.
How we built it
I built the platform using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Node.js, and Express. I integrated Llama 3.2 through Ollama for local AI-powered risk analysis and connected PayPal Sandbox to test order creation and checkout. The backend combines AI assessments with deterministic security rules to make purchasing decisions.
Challenges we ran into
Some major challenges included connecting Ollama to the backend, handling inconsistent AI responses, implementing fallback logic, and troubleshooting PayPal Sandbox authentication and payment capture. These experiences taught me the importance of reliable backend logic, clear security boundaries, and human oversight.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud of building a functional AI-powered shopping platform that integrates Llama 3.2 through Ollama for intelligent purchase risk assessment. We successfully implemented spending limits, restricted-category blocking, and automated approve, review, and block decisions. We also integrated PayPal Sandbox and tested order creation and checkout. Bringing AI reasoning and rule-based security together in one working platform is our biggest achievement.
What we learned
I learned how to integrate local language models into web applications, build backend APIs, structure AI responses, and combine AI reasoning with rule-based security. I also gained experience testing payment workflows and designing human-in-the-loop systems.
What's next for Aurora Market | Payment Firewall
I plan to complete payment capture testing, strengthen security, improve fraud detection, expand audit logging, and deploy Aurora Market so others can experience it.
