you+ | Devpost

Inspiration

As AI makes digital work, content, and services increasingly cheap and abundant, we noticed a shift: real human experiences are becoming more valuable, but harder to coordinate. People want spontaneous, in-person experiences like learning a skill, sharing a meal, or having a meaningful conversation whenever they feel like it. At the same time, many people have idle time they’d happily monetize. Existing platforms are built for planning and listings, not for acting in the moment. We were inspired to build infrastructure that helps humans coordinate now, not later.

What it does

The app is a real-time marketplace for spontaneous, paid human experiences. Users can express immediate intent (“I want to do something now”), see nearby people who are currently available, and place bids on experiences such as skill sharing, cooking together, or informal mentorship. Service providers surface short availability windows, choose which bids to accept, and get paid only when the interaction is verified to have happened. The system guarantees commitment, fair pricing, and real-world follow-through.

How we built it

We built a map-based, (mobile-first?) web app using:

A real-time availability model for service providers
A bidding-based booking flow with enforced time windows
Location-based verification for completed interactions

Gemini 3 handles intent understanding, category matching, experience ranking, and bid guidance. The backend coordinates system state (availability, bids, bookings), while the frontend is optimized for speed—compressing the flow from intent to commitment into minutes.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was designing for real-time behavior instead of defaulting to familiar “listing + messaging” patterns. We also had to carefully choose categories that work well for spontaneous, in-person experiences while keeping the scope small enough to build and demo within a hackathon timeframe.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Defining a clear system for real-time coordination under uncertainty
Making Gemini central to intent understanding, pricing, and decision-making
Designing a flow that delivers instant results, not just discovery
Creating value for both users and service providers symmetrically

What we learned

We learned that many hard problems aren’t about demand or supply, but about coordination cost. When you reduce uncertainty around time, price, and commitment, entirely new kinds of human experiences become viable as products.