Hearth Sanctuary

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  Hearth Ember

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  Hearth Wolf Avatar

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  Hearth Water + LLM texts

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  Breeze Wolf guiding the user

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  Mountain Wolf anchoring the user for a routine

Inspiration

Hearth was built to provide warmth in a world full of robots. Hearth began with a simple, quiet question: What if my desktop didn’t feel so empty?

In a world of productivity tools and aggressive notifications, Hearth is a gentle alternative: a place of stillness and presence. It’s not a productivity app. It’s not a chatbot. It’s a warm, ambient desktop companion built to help people.

What it does

Its primary function is to provide a warm emotional presence, it also delivers a single, meaningful task it does well: It reflects and responds to the user’s emotional state with grounded, elemental insight.

How we built it

Hearth was built as a web-based MVP to validate its emotional and ambient value — but also its focused utility.

Supabase for authentication, presence, and user state storage Netlify for frontend deployment Bolt.new to scaffold a fullstack app (React + Tailwind + Supabase) Framer Motion for smooth ambient transitions and companion animations Custom AI personas for each elemental companion (Fire, Water, Earth, Air)

Challenges we ran into

• We didn’t want to overburden the companion with tasks, but we also didn’t want it to feel passive.
• Designing a single, emotionally resonant utility (reflection and presence) was difficult and nuanced.
• It was hard to prevent the LLMs from becoming either too generic or too therapist-like. Each elemental required a distinct emotional signature and behavior model.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Shipped a calm companion that does one thing well: provides emotionally intelligent reflection in a stylized digital sanctuary
• Created distinct, memorable AI personas that feel grounded and elemental
• Proved that even in a browser MVP, users can form a quiet emotional connection with a non-assistant character

What we learned

• Emotional presence is a utility — especially for people working in isolated or sterile digital environments
• Giving Hearth one job made it stronger, not weaker
• People want software that feels good, even if it doesn’t do a hundred things
• Tone and vibe are product decisions, not just polish — they change how users engage

What's next for Hearth Sanctuary

• Move from web MVP to native desktop app
• Introduce passive animations and visual growth tied to the user’s emotional arc
• Let companions reflect weekly emotional themes back to the user over time
• Experiment with seasonal visuals and companion moods that change subtly with presence
• Develop gentle monetization models based on extended personalization, cosmetic sanctuary upgrades, or supporter access

Built With

• bolt.new
• netlify
• supabase