HypeCheck - Pops up mid-scroll before you buy the hype

💡 Inspiration: the ADHD tax

I have ADHD. My brain doesn't do "add to cart, think about it later". It does tap, buy, regret.

Here's how it goes. 11 pm, scrolling Reels. Someone with glass skin holds up a serum: "this literally fixed my dark spots". Twenty seconds later it's in my cart. A week later it's on my shelf, half-used, solving a problem I never had.

People call this the ADHD tax: money lost to impulse, not to need. Skincare is built for it. Every influencer sells what worked on their skin, and nobody checks it against yours, right at the moment it matters: mid-scroll, before you tap "Shop".

So I built the friend I needed. One who sits in my feed and says "wait, that's not for you" before my thumb moves.

🫧 What it does

One promise: every skincare push in your feed, checked against your own skin, before you buy.

1. 📸 Scan once. One selfie → YouCam AI Skin Analysis scores 8 skin concerns. Your weakest scores become your yardstick.
2. 📱 Scroll like always. HypeCheck quietly reads the Reels & Shorts you watch. Nothing is blocked, nothing you watch is uploaded.
3. 💬 Pop! A skincare push appears → a little "Skip?" pill pops up. Tap it: "This is for dark spots. Yours are already 93. Skip?"
4. 🪞 See it on my face. Not sure? YouCam Skin Simulation shows the influencer's claim on your selfie.
5. 📏 Measure the claim. We re-scan that render with Skin Analysis, so hype becomes a number: dryness 57 → 63. A real change? Go for it. Just noise? Keep your money.
6. 🗂 The Shelf. Everything you were pushed, in one place: how often, by whom, the lowest price, and a match % for your skin.

📊 The proof: my own feed

I turned it on and just scrolled, like I always do. One session:

• 19 skincare pushes caught, from 16 creators, 13 different products.
• 9 actually matched my skin.
• 4 solved problems my skin doesn't have. That's 30% of everything I was sold that I didn't need.
• The one claim aimed at my real weak spot (dryness, 57) measured 57 → 63: a change I'd actually see.

🛠 How I built it

• Native Android (Kotlin + Jetpack Compose). An Accessibility Service reads text only inside the Reels/Shorts player: caption, hashtags, shop tag, and the bottle label in the video (on-device OCR).
• 3 YouCam APIs, chained on your own face: Skin Analysis → Background Removal (your face sticker) → Skin Simulation → Skin Analysis again.
• AI measures, code decides. Verdicts come from clear rules (ingredient → concern, judged on what the product is sold for), backed by 30+ unit tests. Every card shows "Why this verdict" and "How sure I am".
• Safety built in: mercury and steroids are a stop for everyone; with "Pregnant or trying" on, retinoids and hydroquinone are too.
• Claude Haiku only names products in vague posts and answers chat questions with your scores. The rules still make the call.
• Open Beauty Facts adds product photos and full ingredients, only on a strict match.
• Unit-frugal: results are cached by photo, so the whole build used 54 of 1,000 units.

🧱 Challenges

• YouTube stays quiet until a Short's caption loads → HypeCheck re-reads on a timer.
• "Faded my acne marks" is a dark-spot product, not an acne one → verdicts follow what it's sold for, not the words in the caption.
• Deleting a YouCam task deletes its result too → download first, delete second.
• Lookalike products (a 3% toner vs a 10% serum from the same brand) → a match needs the same brand, type and strength.

🏆 Accomplishments

• The full loop, on a real phone, on a real feed: Reel → pop-up → product → claim on my face → measured.
• It said "skip" more often than "buy". That's the point.

📚 What I learned

The most useful thing an AI shopping assistant can say is "you don't need this." A good friend says it, shows why, and still lets you decide.

🚀 What's next

• Price alerts for the one product that actually fits you.
• iOS via a share-sheet extension.

🧪 How to test (2 minutes)

1. Install the APK from the Drive link in "Try it out" (Android 8+). Allow "Install unknown apps" when asked.
2. Skip the camera: tap Use a sample scan to load a ready-made skin score.
3. Type demo in the chat: three skincare posts run through the full flow (pop-up → card → claim on your face → measured). No feed needed.
4. Want the real thing? Tap Turn on watching, enable HypeCheck in Accessibility, and open any skincare YouTube Short or Instagram Reel.

Built With

• accessibility-service
• android
• claude-haiku
• jetpack-compose
• kotlin
• ml-kit
• youcam-background-removal
• youcam-skin-analysis
• youcam-skin-simulation