InvestiPet

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  Log-In/Sign Up page

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  Dashboard showing account balance, point-level, XP level, and tabs.

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  Pet has leveled up once user has accumulated enough XP.

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  Trade tab where user can buy/sell stock depending on their account balance.

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  Portfolio tab that shows stats related to user's stock activity.

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  Guide for user to understand Portfolio statistics, with helpful examples

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  Learn module where user can complete lesson to gain more XP and improve on their financial literacy.

Inspiration

• Transitioning into full-time jobs exposed our lack of financial literacy
• Budgeting and investing felt overwhelming and fragmented
• Existing apps lacked engagement for our generation
• We set out to build a gamified solution that makes learning visible and rewarding

What it does

• Delivers interactive financial lessons in short, focused modules
• Rewards users with XP progression and virtual pet growth
• Uses daily hunger decay to encourage consistent financial progress
• Displays a real-time dashboard for measurable progress

How we built it

• Backend built with FastAPI and SQLAlchemy
• Frontend built with Next.js and React Query
• Designed relational models and a bounded progression system
• Maintained a single source of truth between backend and UI

Challenges we ran into

• Operating under a tight timeline
• Finding psychological tactics to create user retention
• Debugging client-server synchronization issues
• Ensuring consistent state across database and frontend

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Delivered a fully functional full-stack application
• Built deterministic progression logic without background jobs
• Implemented real-time dashboard updates
• Shipped a polished core loop under pressure

What we learned

• Practical API design and database modeling
• The importance of clean state management
• How engagement mechanics impact retention
• How to ship quickly without sacrificing structure

What's next for Investipet

• Expand lessons into investing and long-term planning
• Introduce adaptive difficulty and personalization
• Add social accountability features
• Deploy publicly and iterate based on user feedback

Built With

• fastapi
• finnhubapi
• node.js
• openai
• python
• react
• sqlite
• typescript