GiftyQuest: Gift ideas with a reason

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  Home

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  Alexa speaking

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  Ideas on a budget

Inspiration

Completing the missing piece of every gift tracker: getting ideas!

What it does

• You tell Alexa about someone: their birthday, what they like, what they don't.
• Whenever you hear a hint, you just say it and Alexa saves it.
• When a date is coming up, Alexa reminds you and suggests real Amazon products within your budget. Each idea comes with a reason, like "he said his headphones keep falling out."
• Everything lives on a simple card per person that you can see and edit on the web.

How I built it

I built a web app where you can see each person's card, and connected it to Alexa+ so you can do everything by voice. The "brain" behind Alexa is Amazon Nova on AWS. It runs on AWS, and the gift ideas are real Amazon products.

Challenges I ran into

• I wanted to show real Amazon products with photo and price, but Amazon only opens that to affiliate accounts that already have sales. For now, each idea links to an Amazon search instead.
• Some AI models showed up as available but wouldn't actually work on our account, so we switched to Amazon Nova.
• In long conversations, the AI sometimes said "I saved it" when it hadn't. We fixed it so it really saves every answer.
• At first the gift ideas were too obvious, or not real products, like fan merch. We taught it to suggest only real things you can buy.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Alexa speaks first. She tells you what's coming up and what you already know, before you even ask.
• Every gift idea explains why it fits that person.
• It feels like talking to a friend who remembers everything for you.

What I learned

• A good gift is really about remembering, not about shopping.
• Talking is much easier than filling in forms. People share more when they just chat.
• Small details, like a hint someone dropped months ago, make the biggest difference.

What's next for GiftyQuest

• Let several family members share the same people and hints, so nobody buys the same gift twice.
• Gentle reminders a few weeks before each important date.

Built With

• alexa+
• amazon-associates
• amazon-bedrock
• amazon-dynamodb
• amazon-nova
• aws-amplify
• aws-cloudformation
• aws-lambda
• aws-systems-manager
• hono
• lucide-react
• mcp
• model-context-protocol
• node.js
• react
• react-router
• tailwindcss
• typescript
• vite
• zod