FinanceCoach Nova sonic hackathon

Inspiration

What it does

We saw how overwhelming personal finance can be budgeting, tracking expenses, forecasting savings, and staying motivated all at once. Most apps feel cold and robotic. We wanted to create a warm, voice-first financial companion that feels like a trusted friend who listens, understands your emotions, and gives practical, personalized advice in real time—powered by Amazon Nova Sonic.

How we built it

Understands natural voice input ("I spent ₹5,000 on shopping this week, I'm stressed about savings") Tracks expenses, income, budgets, and savings goals Gives instant emotional + practical feedback ("I hear you're stressed let's cut small subscriptions and move ₹2,000 to savings")

Challenges we ran into

Frontend: Android (Kotlin + Jetpack Compose) clean dark-mode UI with voice-first mic button and animated feedback cards. Voice input: Android SpeechRecognizer → real-time transcription.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Nova Sonic integration timing API rate limits and latency made real-time voice feel slow; solved with caching common responses and pre-loading prompts. Emotion detection in Indian accents Nova Sonic sometimes misread stress as neutral; added custom prompt engineering with examples of Indian English tone.

What we learned

Voice UX is hard users speak fast, mumble, mix languages. Nova Sonic handles it better than expected, but prompt engineering is 80% of the magic. Emotional finance is underserved people need empathy before numbers.

What's next for FinanceCoach Nova sonic hackathon

Full Nova Sonic multi-turn conversation (ask follow-up questions like "Why did you spend so much on food?"). Add investment suggestions (stocks/mutual funds) using Nova + public finance APIs. Community sharing users anonymously share budgets and get peer motivation.

Built With

• api
• compose
• jetpack
• kotlin