Echoes

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  dashboard

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  how stars formed

Inspiration

We wanted a more visual and emotional way to keep memories. Most journal apps feel like lists or documents. We imagined something quieter — a personal night sky where each memory becomes a star you can arrange, connect, and revisit.

What it does

Echoes is a personal universe for your memories. You add stories (with optional photos), and each one appears as a colored star based on its category (Family, Friends, Travel, School, or Other). You can drag stars around to shape your own constellations, filter and search them, and open any star to read its full story. Everything stays in your browser, with simple export and import so you can keep a backup.

How we built it

We built Echoes as a single self-contained HTML file using React and Tailwind CSS. Memories are stored in component state and rendered as absolutely positioned stars on a canvas. Dragging uses pointer events to update each star’s position, while category colors and dashed constellation lines give the sky a sense of connection. Images are stored as base64 so the whole app remains one file.

Challenges we ran into

Keeping the experience smooth while letting people freely drag stars was trickier than expected. We also had to balance a rich visual design with the constraints of a single-file app — especially once we added image support and wanted to avoid large file sizes or broken imports. Making the empty state feel inviting instead of blank took several iterations.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Keeping the experience smooth while letting people freely drag stars was trickier than expected. We also had to balance a rich visual design with the constraints of a single-file app — especially once we added image support and wanted to avoid large file sizes or broken imports. Making the empty state feel inviting instead of blank took several iterations.

What we learned

We learned how much small interaction details matter — hover tooltips, subtle glow effects, and clear empty states make the difference between something that feels unfinished and something people actually want to open again. We also got better at keeping a feature-rich idea lightweight.

What's next for Echoes

We want to add persistent storage so memories stay between sessions, better constellation tools (named groups, custom connections), and the ability to share a read-only view of your sky. Longer term, we’d like gentle reminders and a simple way to turn a collection of stars into a visual story or timeline.

Built With

• html5
• react
• tailwind