Evolve.ai

Inspiration

Every day we hear "AI will take your job." But no one tells you what to do about it or how you'd pay for the skills you need. We wanted to build something that flips fear into a plan. Instead of "are you replaceable?", the question becomes "how do I evolve?"

What it does Evolve.ai is a 3-screen financial co-pilot. You pick your job (Junior Accountant, Copywriter, etc.), enter your salary, and it shows you three things:

1. Reality Check: how AI will reshape your tasks over the next 3 years
2. Timeline: which skills to learn, in what order
3. Financials: a split-screen comparison of your current salary vs. your evolved role, plus a micro-budget that finds money in your current spending to fund retraining

How we built it Next.js 16 with Tailwind v4 and TypeScript. Six job profiles are hardcoded with real BLS/Glassdoor salary data and realistic evolution paths. The Gemini 2.5 Flash API is wired in as an optional fallback. All the UI is custom no component library. The dark studio aesthetic (warm cream on black canvas, burnt-orange accents) came from the ORYZO design system.

Challenges we ran into The hardest part was making the budget generator feel real without a banking API. We solved it by modeling disposable spending directly on each profile takeout, streaming, coffee, subscriptions and letting users "allocate" that money to a Future-Proof Fund with one click. Tailwind v4's CSS-based config caught us off guard. Custom spacing values in @theme silently override Tailwind's utility scale, so p-6 became 6px instead of 24px. We had to audit every page.

Accomplishments that we're proud of The animated timeline and the split-screen salary comparison. Watching the salary counter lerp from $57K to $79K while the green evolved path fills in makes the point instantly no wall of text needed.

What we learned A hackathon forces hard trade-offs. No auth, no database, no real banking and that's fine. The demo sells the idea. We also learned that AI-anxiety is real, but specific. People don't fear AI in general; they fear losing their job. So we made it personal: pick your role, see your path.

What's next Expand to 30+ job profiles. Add a "what-if" slider to adjust training budget and see how timelines shift. Connect to real financial accounts via Plaid for true budget allocation.

Built With

• bls-/-glassdoor-/-salary.com-(salary-data)
• framer-motion
• gemini-2.5-flash-api
• github
• lucide-icons
• next.js-16
• react-19
• tailwind-v4
• typescript