BuildMate

Inspiration

Planning a home improvement project often feels more complicated than the build itself. Between browsing endless Lowe’s aisles, comparing prices, and calculating materials, even the simplest DIY ideas can become overwhelming. Our team wanted to make home improvement more accessible and data-driven, helping people focus on creating rather than calculating. BuildMate makes DIY planning simple with its retro-styled UI and sometimes cocky responses.

What it does

BuildMate takes any DIY idea and transforms it into complete materials and pricing breakdown. You type in whatever you want to build (e.g. "bookshelf", "doghouse", "shed") and answer some follow-up questions for more specifics (dimensions, material types, finish options, constraints). BuildMate will output a plan with an estimated cost, time, and team size needed, along with the needed materials and tools.

How we built it

We built this app using React + TypeScript with Vite. We created a unique retro 90s computer UI with custom components (RetroWindow, RetroButton, RetroInput, etc.). We used Google Gemini API to generate clarifying follow-up questions and provide intelligent and realistic cost/time estimates.

Challenges we ran into

Keeping the UI retro without sacrificing responsiveness
Making the AI understand confusing user inputs and create structured, formatted responses

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a fully functional planning app in under 24 hours
Created something genuinely interesting and fun to work on and engage with

What we learned

Prompt engineering
AI works best when paired with guided UX and human clarification
Simplicity is best

What's next for BuildMate

Looking ahead, we plan to expand our project to include more step-by-step build instructions & cut diagrams, and a cost optimizer. We would like to directly include end-to-end API integration with Lowes' or across other retail websites and maybe even connecting to user's supply lists.