ChoreBloom

Inspiration

I had the idea to make a gamified chore system a year ago around the time my son adopted bunnies. Bunnies are clean little critters that poop a lot. One of his chores is to routinely clean the hutch but, especially when we first got them, he sometimes forgets the importance of doing this. I wanted a way to reward him while also encouraging him to take responsibility without requiring me to always be demanding he fulfill his responsibilities.

What it does

ChoreBloom creates incentive for children to do their chores by providing in app coins which can then be utilized in a custom (per child) store to redeem rewards. Think ice cream at dinner, a visit to the zoo, even a game console (for a large coin cost). It gives kids a way of having a goal and a means to achieve it by slowly working toward gathering enough currency to purchase the item. Merits and demerits additionally help refine their behavior by providing incentive to behave well. My daughter lives to travel with food to the living room but with demerits it gives her a reason to respect our rules and avoid losing her hard earned coins. Given a parent is likely to reward their children with allowance, game time, and events it acts as an added benefit to tie it back to the behavior that proves they are deserving of it.

How we built it

This app was almost entirely built with Bolt.new prompts. I did use ChatGPT to help refine my original outline of requirements but from there Bolt.new took over and built the functionality. I made changes to the app as I saw functionality I didn't like and refined it into the current app as it is now.

Challenges we ran into

I ended up wasting quite a few tokens in the early iterations of the application as the database got into a bad state from some migrations I had to run. This caused me to think one of the issues from the app was related to the code not the database. I reset the database in supabase and it began working immediately. Additionally I ran into issues near the end where occasionally smaller fixes could lead to some bugs emerging with the existing logic making me more cautious about larger scale changes.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I managed to built out the majority of the application I was hoping to build. I did have a few features I couldn't get in place given my tokens remaining but all in all I believe it was a success.

What we learned

I learned how to build an app with little development work on my part. I'm encouraged to use bolt.new for frontend projects I may have in the future around embedded development, home automation, and so on. It's a really neat tool and was interesting to learn its ins and outs.

What's next for ChoreBloom

I'd like to add back a few features I removed: individual and family quests, restrictions on inventory item use times (think a game only on a Friday for redemption), the calendar view, and a few smaller items. I'd also love to spend more time building out animations and further refining the UI. I think Bolt did a nice job creating a working prototype but have been humbled and encouraged by some of the beautiful projects I've seen people release in this hackathon.

Built With

• bolt.new
• chatgpt
• netlify
• supabase