PetFinder

AI-powered pet matching app that helps reunite lost cats and dogs with their owners through image recognition and smart community search.

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Inspiration

PetFinder was inspired by the emotional stress and uncertainty people experience when a pet goes missing. Many owners rely on social media posts, neighborhood apps, flyers, and shelters, but the information is fragmented across different platforms and difficult to search efficiently. We wanted to create a centralized AI-powered solution that increases the chances of reuniting lost pets with their families quickly and safely.

What it does

PetFinder is an AI-powered mobile application that helps reunite lost cats and dogs with their owners using image recognition and smart matching technology.

Users can report lost or found pets by uploading photos and entering details such as location and contact information. The system extracts visual pet features including breed, fur pattern, color, size, and distinctive markings, then converts the image into vector embeddings for similarity matching.

PetFinder searches connected platforms such as Facebook, Nextdoor, SPCAs, Rover, and local veterinary sources to identify potential matches. Users receive ranked match results with similarity percentages, distance, and timestamps. The platform also includes real-time messaging so owners and finders can communicate directly.

How we built it

We built PetFinder using MeDo as a core development and planning tool throughout the project.

Using MeDo, we structured the application architecture, designed workflows, refined UI ideas, and developed the AI-powered pet matching system. MeDo helped us break the project into smaller components such as authentication, lost and found pet reporting, image matching workflows, notifications, and messaging functionality.

The application was designed as a mobile-first platform with features including:

  • User authentication and report management
  • AI image feature extraction and vector embeddings
  • Similarity scoring and ranking algorithms
  • Push notifications for potential matches
  • In-app messaging between owners and finders
  • Integrations with community platforms and local resources

MeDo significantly accelerated the development process by helping organize ideas, generate functionality, and improve overall system design.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges was designing an accurate AI matching workflow. Pets can appear very different depending on lighting, camera angles, movement, and image quality. Creating a system capable of identifying similarities across different photos required careful planning around embeddings and similarity thresholds.

Another challenge was designing integrations with multiple community platforms while keeping the app simple and easy to use. We also had to consider privacy, communication safety, and how to handle incomplete or low-quality reports.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are most proud of building a meaningful AI-powered application that solves a real-world problem affecting millions of pet owners.

Some accomplishments include:

  • Designing a complete AI-based pet matching workflow
  • Creating a user-friendly lost and found reporting system
  • Building similarity ranking and threshold functionality
  • Planning integrations across multiple community platforms
  • Developing secure in-app communication features

We are especially proud of how MeDo helped us rapidly transform an idea into a structured and scalable application concept.

What we learned

Throughout this project, we learned more about AI image processing, vector embeddings, similarity matching systems, and scalable application design.

We also learned how valuable AI-assisted development tools like MeDo can be during brainstorming, planning, and feature generation. Using MeDo improved our workflow and helped us iterate on ideas much faster while keeping the project organized.

What's next for PetFinder

In the future, we plan to:

  • Expand support beyond cats and dogs
  • Improve AI matching accuracy with larger datasets
  • Add GPS-assisted search functionality
  • Build partnerships with shelters and veterinary clinics
  • Develop a web-based platform alongside the mobile app
  • Add multilingual support for broader accessibility

Our long-term goal is to create a reliable AI-powered network that helps reunite lost pets with their families faster and more effectively.

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