Vibe Buddy

Pet Creation Phases
Login / Homepage / Settings
Built-in buddy functions
Report Generation

Inspiration

Modern workers and students need a low-intervention "cyber buddy" to balance intense focus with emotional support. Existing tools lack deep personalization and behavioral awareness. Our goal was to create a virtual companion that is uniquely tailored (via AI) and actively assists productivity through contextual sensing.

What it does

Vibe Buddy is a Chrome Extension providing a personalized virtual pet with three core functions:

AI Customization: Generates a unique, static pet image for the user using a simple text prompt.
Contextual Matching: The pet's static image/action dynamically matches the user's current browsing context (e.g., changes from 'focused' on a work site to 'alert' on a social site).
Efficiency Tools: Offers a simple Focus Timer and generates a Behavior-Time Focus Report to help users visualize and optimize their time allocation across different contexts.
Dialogue: Provides simple, contextual dialogue interactions with the pet.

How we built it

Frontend (Chrome Extension)

Framework: React 19 + TypeScript 5
Build Tool: WXT (Web Extension Tools)
State Management: Zustand (lightweight, no Redux boilerplate)
Styling: Tailwind CSS (utility-first, pixel art theme)
Animation: Framer Motion
Storage: Chrome Storage API + IndexedDB
Testing: Vitest + React Testing Library

Backend (AWS)

API Gateway: REST + WebSocket for real-time updates
Compute: Lambda (Node.js 20 runtime)
Database: DynamoDB (single-table design)
Auth: Cognito + Google OAuth 2.0
Storage: S3 (pet images, static assets)
AI: Google Gemini Nano API (Banana) for image generation
IaC: AWS CDK (TypeScript)

Challenges we ran into

Behavioral Image Mapping: The technical challenge of seamlessly matching and displaying a set of pre-designed static behavior images (e.g., 'focus,' 'rest') with the AI-generated unique base pet image.
Cross-Component State Sync: Managing state and transmitting behavioral triggers between the Content Script (the pet renderer) and the Service Worker (the brain) within the extension's architecture.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully integrated the Google Gemini 2.5 Flash API for unique image generation, making every pet truly one-of-a-kind. We delivered a functional Behavior-Time Focus Report that gives users tangible data on their time spent across classified contexts, linking the virtual companion directly to real-world productivity.

What we learned

We gained significant expertise in Chrome Extension development patterns, specifically mastering the Gemini-2.5-flash API for robust background-to-content script communication. We also developed strong skills in Prompt Engineering to optimize real-time text classification and accurate behavioral inference.

What's next for Vibe Buddy

Our next steps include expanding the library of behavior-matching images and enhancing the pet's dialogue system for more complex and engaging interactions. We also plan to integrate local data analysis to provide personalized focus recommendations. Finally, we look forward to completing our achievement system to offer more rewarding mechanisms that encourage users to continue using our products and develop better computer use routines.