Crabituaries

🦀 About the Project: Crabituaries

Crabituaries is a heartfelt, quirky virtual memorial platform for hermit crabs (and other small pets) that helps people say goodbye in a creative, meaningful way. We wanted to build something that was both emotionally resonant and just a little bizarre — because grief doesn’t have to be boring.

💡 Inspiration

This project started as a passing joke about creating a digital hermit crab graveyard — but the more we thought about it, the more real it became. We realized there’s a gap in how people, especially kids, process the loss of small pets. Crabituaries is designed to fill that gap with humor, empathy, and a touch of ceremony.

💪 What We Learned

How to build modular components quickly for visual storytelling
Balancing tone: sincere enough to be useful, weird enough to be memorable
Rapid prototyping with AI-generated eulogies using OpenAI

🛠️ How We Built It

We created a web app using modern frontend and backend tools (Bolt.new). We focused on building out the core memorial creation flow, AI eulogy generation, and a lightweight shrine customization UI. A key challenge was making it feel respectful while still leaning into its weirdness.

⚠️ Challenges

Designing a visual language that balanced humor with dignity
Getting the AI to generate eulogies that were emotionally appropriate (and crab-themed)
Scope creep — so many feature ideas, so little time!