Haven Check

Beginning Page
Starting Page

Inspiration

Our idea started with psychiatric service dogs trained to support people with schizophrenia.

When someone experiences sensory perception distress or hallucinations, like wondering if someone is standing in the dark or if a shadow is an intruder, trained service dogs perform a life-saving technique called reality testing. The owner commands the dog to greet or search the room. If the dog wags its tail, finds nothing, and sits down calmly, the owner knows for sure: I am safe, it is not real.

However, training a psychiatric service dog takes 1.5 to 2 years and costs upwards of $30,000, which almost nobody can afford.

We asked: What if your smartphone could perform that exact reality check in under a second, completely for free?

We built Haven Check to be an empathetic digital second set of eyes in your pocket. We paired it with the nostalgic, optimistic Frutiger Aero aesthetic with water bubbles, sky gradients, and gentle sounds so it feels like a friendly, soothing companion rather than a cold clinical tool.

What it does

Live 2-Second Room Sentinel: Continuously watches your physical space and updates every 2 seconds to confirm whether any people, open flames, or safety hazards are visible.
Snap and Ask: Take or upload a photo of an ambiguous shape, like a dark coat hanging on a door, and ask specific questions such as "Is that a person or a jacket?"
Objective Grounding Feedback: Always provides an unbiased person check, safety assessment, and scene description without validating scary thoughts or making claims beyond what the camera can see.
5-4-3-2-1 Sensory Grounding Pod: A built-in mindfulness tool that helps calm acute sensory panic by guiding you through 5 things you see, 4 you feel, 3 you hear, 2 you smell, and 1 grounding truth.
Procedural Water Audio: Plays soothing liquid droplet sounds generated directly by the browser with code.
100% Private: Your room photos stay strictly in temporary memory and are never saved to any database or account.

How we built it

Google Gemini API: Powered by the Google GenAI SDK using Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview with structured JSON output for fast, reliable answers.
Smart Camera Pipeline: Captures video frames using an offscreen canvas downsampled to 512 pixels, keeping data usage minimal at just 16 KB per second.
Frontend and Design: Built with Next.js 16, React 19, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS, featuring custom Frutiger Aero liquid glass sheens and Web Audio API synthesis.

Challenges we ran into

Achieving Sub-Second Latency: When someone is panicking, waiting 5 seconds for an AI response feels terrifying. Most standard models took 3 to 5 seconds or ran out of quota. We tested available Gemini models to find Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview, which responds in 0.72 seconds, bringing total roundtrip time down to under 1 second.
Teaching the AI to Be Honest and Grounded: Standard AI chatbots often over-reassure by saying "Nobody is in your house," which an AI cannot guarantee, or speculate on shadows by saying "That looks like a figure," which triggers panic. We carefully tuned the prompt to only report what the camera can verify and explain ordinary objects neutrally.
Cross-Platform Camera Fit: Laptops use wide 16:9 webcams while phones use tall 9:16 portrait cameras. We wrote custom canvas cropping math so the AI always sees the exact same frame displayed on the user's screen.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Sub-Second Multimodal Vision: Delivering structured, intelligent visual analysis in under 1 second.
Empathetic and Accessible Design: Recreating the function of a $30,000 psychiatric service dog in a free web app that works on both phones and laptops.
Therapeutic Frutiger Aero UI: Creating a calming, tactile interface with procedural water drop sounds that genuinely eases stress during sensory overwhelm.
Zero-Retention Privacy: Protecting user dignity and privacy by ensuring personal room photos are never stored.

What we learned

Speed is Safety: When dealing with perception distress, sub-second latency is an emotional safety requirement, not just a technical benchmark.
Design Can Heal: Tactile physics, water elements, and soft nature colors measurably reduce anxiety compared to sterile, monochrome minimalism.
The Value of Reality-Testing: Clear, non-judgmental technology can empower people experiencing hallucinations to independently regain confidence in their surroundings.

What's next for Haven Check

Offline On-Device AI: Running lightweight local vision models directly in the browser so Haven Check works without internet access.
Smartwatch Haptic Integration: Connecting with Apple Watch and WearOS to detect sudden heart rate spikes and guide users through physical breathing vibrations.
Multilingual Support: Providing spoken audio grounding and reassurance in multiple languages and calming voices.