🤝 CoWorker — Your AI Business Buddy
Inspiration
Starting a business is tough, especially for beginners and older folks who aren't tech-savvy. Many people have great ideas, but they get stuck when it comes to writing business plans, calculating ingredient costs, tracking daily money, or finding cheap suppliers.
Spreadsheets and accounting apps are often too confusing and full of complicated numbers. We built CoWorker to act as a simple, voice-guided assistant that handles the boring paperwork so everyday people can focus on running their business with confidence.
What it does
CoWorker is an easy-to-use business helper powered by Gemini 3.5 Flash that takes care of daily business tasks in 7 simple ways:
- Snap Receipts to Track Money: Just snap a picture of any receipt (supplies, electricity, or gas). CoWorker reads the total automatically and saves it to your money tracker—no typing needed.
- Find Nearby Wholesalers: Shows you the nearest wholesale shops to buy bulk ingredients using Google Maps inside the app.
- Smart Town Analysis: Tells you what kinds of businesses are missing in your town (for example, in Lahad Datu) so you can start something that actually makes money.
- Idea Generator by Budget: Gives you a step-by-step business plan based on how much money you have in your pocket (even if it's just RM 300).
- Find Cheap Raw Materials: Compares ingredient prices from local shops so you know where to buy without walking store-to-store.
- Trending Food & Drinks: Shows you popular food and drink trends so you know what people want to buy right now.
- Easy Business Advice: Gives you simple, plain-English tips on how your business is doing and what to do next to boost your sales.
How we built it
- Frontend: Built with React using big buttons, clear colors, and large text designed for older users. Includes a phone camera feature for receipts and a microphone button so users can just speak instead of typing.
- Backend: Hosted on Google Cloud Run using Google's Agent tools. It turns off automatically when nobody is using it to keep running costs at zero.
- AI Brain: Uses Gemini 3.5 Flash to read receipt photos, answer questions, and search Google for local shop info.
- Database: Uses Google Firestore to remember the user's town, budget, and past receipts so they don't have to repeat themselves.
Challenges we ran into
- Keeping it Super Simple: Making complex money calculations look easy on screen took a lot of work. We solved this by showing only one big button or question at a time.
- Messy Receipts: Wrinkled, faded, or handwritten receipts from local stores were hard to read at first. We fixed this by tweaking how Gemini reads image details.
- Local Town Info: Making sure the AI gave real, helpful advice for small towns required fine-tuning our search tools.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- No-Typing Money Tracker: Created a system where taking one photo automatically logs sales and expenses without touching the keyboard.
- Made for Everyone: Designed an easy interface with voice support so older adults and non-tech users feel comfortable using it.
- Zero Cost Setup: Built the whole backend on Google Cloud in a way that uses almost zero server cost.
What we learned
- Actions > Just Chatting: An AI that actually does tasks for you (scanning photos, searching maps, saving data) is way more useful than a basic chatbot.
- Memory Matters: Storing user information safely helps the AI feel like a real partner that remembers your business history.
What's next for CoWorker
- WhatsApp & Telegram Support: Allowing business owners to just snap receipt photos and send voice notes through WhatsApp.
- Works Offline: Letting users save receipts even when they don't have internet, then uploading them later automatically.
- Local Dialect Voice: Improving voice search so it understands local regional dialects effortlessly.
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