Digital Pet Life Platform

Inspiration

I wanted to explore what a “digital life” could feel like if data, memory, and AI were turned into an interactive companion. Digital Pet Life Platform is a shared virtual pet that reacts to real events, evolves over time, and expresses thoughts based on its current state.

What it does

The project creates a browser-based digital pet with changing health, energy, mood, and growth states. Users can interact with the pet, watch its status change, and see AI-generated thoughts. The platform also includes a memory system so the pet can remember past interactions and use them to shape future responses.

How I built it

I built it with Next.js, React, Zustand, XState, Supabase, and local AI through Ollama. The pet state machine controls behavior and evolution, while server APIs manage shared state, memory saving, and event updates.

Challenges

The main challenge was making the pet feel alive instead of just visual. I worked on state changes, AI fallback behavior, shared state, and memory storage so the experience still works even when some services are not configured.

What’s next

Next I want to improve the pet’s personality, add richer data sources, support more real-time events, and make the memory system feel more emotional and useful.