don't be a stranger

What’s worse than a breakup? Losing your best friends in slow motion because ‘life’. But I refuse. Screw the loneliness epidemics. We're stopping friends from drifting apart with Don’t Be a Stranger.

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Inspiration

I found my best friend when I was eight years old. She was a “no-context-friend” which means I could start telling her about high school drama and she knew everyone in my class, could recognise them in the class photo, even though we didn’t go to the same school. She had known every thought I had from when I was young and nothing was TMI. Then, we went to college in different countries and schedules were so messy. Now, I know the name of her roommate and think I know who she’s dating and what she’s majoring in and when I realised this it broke my heart. Everyone says drifting away is a part of life but that sucks, I want to fix it and that’s why I made “Don’t be a Stranger.”

What it does

I don’t think having AI replace human relationships is the best thing for us because what’s the point of life if we’re alone and my chatbot is talking to your chatbot while I doomscroll online. However, I think there’s a clever way to harness it to nurture our relationships and take out the logistical friction around friendship. Don’t Be a Stranger privately considers shared calendar availability, time zones, calling hours, how close someone is to you, and how long it has been since you spoke. It uses GPT-5.6 to recommend one friend to call right now, with three backups. If nobody is available, it helps schedule a catch-up instead. No actual user data is shared but it can tell when you are busy and when you are free.

How I built it

I built my project using Codex with 5.6 Sol on high effort. Once I came up with the idea, I gave it a detailed prompt, what I wanted to fix, the features I imagined it having, and what I imagined it looking like. I also asked it to ask me lots of questions because as a writer I know the way to develop ideas is by answering questions. Then, it wrote most of the code, while I reviewed its work and it gave it high level feedback. I integrated Google Calendar using Composio so that multiple people’s calendars can be attached to it and it can do easy integrations. This was honestly a little scary because I had to configure OAuth and venture out of my comfort zone. I tested the app with some of my friends to see if these things actually work. It’s hosted through OpenAI Sites at chatgpt.site.

Challenges we ran into

If I am being completely honest, I was expecting to face more challenges because as a humanities and statistics major I always assumed creating an entire web app (that wasn’t basic if-else statements and didn’t look shit) would be horrible. But Codex was such a great tool and such an incredible collaborator. It made the process far less daunting and genuinely made me feel like I can do anything. It was extremely beginner friendly.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm very proud of how it looks and feels because I think it has a great vibe and the UIUX is lowkey how I was imagining it in my mind exactly.

What we learned

I learned how to prompt better while vibe coding because apps shouldn't be slop but with a detailed enough prompt AI can genuinely be incredible. Anytime you say "oh I wish there was some way for me to..." now I know that I can build it. I learned how to configure OAuth better and where API keys are located lmao. In general, I think this experience was invaluable to be and I had a lot of fun working on this.

What's next for don't be a stranger

I think this is a good prototype but the next step would be either an actual app on the app store as opposed to a web app. Or if there is too much friction to download it then perhaps somehow connecting it to Whatsapp or Facetime directly so that people can use this easily. Though, I'll probably start with an app on the app store. If not solving the loneliness epidemic for everyone, I know I'm definitely going to use it because I need it. I had a 20 person high school friend group and we barely catch up but still love each other and I think I've had 50 friends in my 20 years of life that I love deeply. I'm going to get all of them on the app and hopefully the ripple effect happens and they also get all their different friend groups on the app. (I do secretly hope that everyone uses it and I never have to hear someone tell me “it’s inevitable” or “you just need to grow up”)

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