Impulse Check

Inspiration

We live in a world of frictionless consumption, where "one-click" buy buttons are engineered to bypass our rational minds. As a student at the University of Windsor, I noticed how easily digital storefronts create dopamine loops that lead to instant regret. I wanted to build a "behavioral speed-bump" a moment of forced intentionality that makes the user pause and reflect before the money leaves their account.

What it does

Impulse Check is a cinematic AI dashboard that acts as a circuit breaker for spending. By pasting a product URL, the app utilizes Gemini 2.5 Flash to perform a deep-dive analysis of the item. It doesn't just list pros and cons; it calculates the massive opportunity cost of that purchase. It visualizes what that same money could look like as 10-year S&P 500 growth, high-yield savings, or a life-changing charitable donation through GiveWell—such as providing 120 meals to those in need.

How we built it

The core of the application is built on Next.js 16 using the high-performance Turbopack engine. For the "brain," we leveraged the Gemini 2.5 Flash API via a strict JSON schema, ensuring the AI outputs are punchy, data-rich, and perfectly formatted for our UI. The visual experience was crafted with cinematic glassmorphism and mesh gradients to create a premium, hardware-inspired aesthetic that commands the user's focus.

Challenges we ran into

One of the primary hurdles was the "unknown product" bug—ensuring the AI could identify a specific item and its price accurately from just a raw URL without a pre-built scraper. We also faced the challenge of state management between the landing page and the "Bento-style" results. We had to refine the scroll-reveal logic to ensure that once the data was ready, the transition felt like an intentional journey downward into financial reality.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully created a tool that feels more like an interactive meditation than a financial calculator. The integration of the "Reflective Spin" loading state turns the wait-time for AI analysis into a moment of calm, and the massive, high-contrast Impulse Risk Score provides an immediate, visceral understanding of the decision at hand.

What we learned

Building this project taught me the power of Behavioral UI. I learned that adding deliberate friction can actually improve a user's life by protecting their long-term goals from short-term impulses. On the technical side, working with the latest Next.js 16 and Gemini 2.5 required deep-diving into structured outputs and modern deployment workflows on Vercel.

What's next for Impulse Check

The next evolution involves building a browser extension to intercept purchases directly on Amazon or eBay. I also plan to implement a persistent "Saved Total" tracker so users can see the cumulative impact of their discipline over time. Finally, I'd like to integrate real-time API pricing for more accurate compound interest calculations based on the specific item's cost.

Built With

• gemini-2.5-flash
• next.js