Inspiration
We noticed that most screen-time tools focus on one thing: using the internet less. But the internet is also where we learn, work, communicate, and relax. Chungus Life was inspired by a different question: What if we measured intentional internet use instead of just screen time? We wanted to create something that makes people conscious of whether their online behavior matches the goals they set for themselves.
What it does
Chungus Life is a browser companion that tracks website usage and compares it against personalized goals. Websites are categorized as educational, productive, entertainment, social, gaming, or other. A traffic-light system gives users immediate feedback: green means they are within their goal, yellow warns that they are approaching it, and red signals that they have exceeded it.
Those habits affect a virtual pet with five health states: Thriving, Happy, Tired, Sick, and Critical. Intentional and productive browsing can improve its health, while repeatedly exceeding self-selected limits causes its health to decline. Users can still intentionally bypass a limit when necessary instead of being completely blocked.
How we built it
We built Chungus Life as a browser extension using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with Chrome/Edge extension APIs for website activity tracking and local data storage. We created a background tracking system that records time spent across websites and a content script that categorizes websites, calculates traffic-light states, and displays interventions.
We also developed a health system that converts browsing behavior into pet states that can be communicated to our hardware component. AI is used to help users establish personalized browsing goals rather than forcing every user into the same limits.
Challenges we ran into
One of our biggest challenges was deciding what actually counts as "good" or "bad" internet usage. YouTube, for example, could mean watching a lecture or endlessly scrolling through entertainment. We realized that judging websites alone was not enough, so we designed Chungus around user intent and self-selected goals.
We also faced the challenge of connecting several systems together: real-time browser tracking, extension UI, persistent data, AI recommendations, and physical hardware. Keeping those components synchronized while building within a hackathon timeframe required us to simplify our architecture and focus on a reliable core loop.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud that Chungus Life goes beyond being another screen-time blocker. We created a system where digital habits have visible consequences through both software and a physical companion. The traffic-light system makes feedback understandable immediately, while the pet turns abstract screen-time data into something users can actually see and care about.
We're especially proud of designing the system around agency rather than restriction. Entertainment, gaming, and social media are not automatically treated as bad. What matters is whether users are spending their time the way they intended.
What we learned
We learned that behavior-change technology requires more than tracking data. The way information is presented can be just as important as the information itself. A number saying "120 minutes" is easy to ignore, but watching a companion move from Happy to Tired creates a much more understandable representation of the same behavior.
We also learned a lot about browser-extension architecture, background processes, local storage, AI integration, hardware/software communication, and designing multiple components to operate as one system.
What's next for Chungus Life
Our next step is making Chungus understand context, not just websites. Instead of classifying all YouTube activity the same way, Chungus could distinguish between watching a class lecture and scrolling through Shorts. We also want to integrate calendars and learning-management systems so Chungus can understand upcoming assignments, study periods, and personal schedules.
Long term, we envision Chungus Life as an AI-powered digital companion that lives across a user's devices and helps them build a healthier relationship with technology—not by telling them to stop using the internet, but by helping them use it intentionally.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.