Dr. Theragotchi

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  Design Architecture Visualization

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  Introduction Page

Inspiration

Mental health tools often feel clinical and impersonal. We wanted to create something engaging that people would actually use daily, combining the nostalgic appeal of virtual pets with modern AI to support emotional wellbeing in a way that feels like caring for a friend rather than completing a health task.

What it does

Dr. Teragotchi is an AI-powered virtual pet that responds to your emotions and grows through interaction. Users chat with their pet, which responds with personality based on emotional context. The app tracks emotional patterns, generates personalized diary entries, and rewards engagement through an evolution system where pets grow as users maintain consistent emotional check-ins.

How we built it

We developed a FastAPI backend with Supabase for data persistence, connecting to OpenAI for natural language processing. The frontend is built with Flutter for cross-platform consistency, featuring responsive animations that bring the virtual pets to life. We carefully crafted AI prompts that balance therapeutic value with conversational authenticity, making interactions feel less like therapy and more like chatting with a friend.

Challenges we ran into

Balancing AI responses was challenging – too clinical felt robotic, while too casual lacked emotional support. We faced significant API integration issues, particularly with rate limiting and response time variability from OpenAI's services that affected conversation flow. Managing stateless interactions in the FastAPI backend while maintaining context for emotionally coherent conversations required complex prompt engineering. The Supabase database interactions sometimes introduced latency, especially when simultaneously updating user profiles, chat history, and emotional metrics. We also struggled with maintaining consistent API response formats across different endpoints while keeping the frontend implementation clean and responsive.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully created an app that makes emotional wellbeing engaging rather than obligatory. Our pets' natural conversational style avoids the typical "AI therapist" feel while still providing meaningful support. The diary generation system transforms chat data into reflective insights without user effort – genuinely adding value through technology.

What we learned

We learned that effective emotional support tools need personality as much as functionality. Technical implementation matters, but the quality of prompts and character design dramatically impacts user engagement. We also discovered the importance of balancing brevity with depth in AI responses to maintain natural conversation flow.

What's next for Dr. Teragotchi

We plan to expand with more pet types and evolution paths tied to different emotional growth journeys. We're developing community features where users can interact with others' pets while maintaining privacy. We're also exploring personalized goal setting based on emotional patterns and implementing more sophisticated diary insights to help users understand their emotional trends over time.

Built With

• c++
• dart
• fastapi
• flutter
• postgresql
• python
• swift