Inspiration
University life is expensive, and splitting rent, bills, and groceries with flatmates can get complicated. I wanted to make budgeting and saving feel less stressful. That’s how Lafufu Finance was born — a social, fun way for students to manage money, hit goals, and earn rewards.
What it does
Lafufu is a finance tool that helps students track, save, and make smarter spending choices. It tracks expenses like rent, bills, and groceries, uses AI agents powered by Google Gemini to analyze JSON-based mock transaction data, gives personalised recommendations on saving, and insights, allowing personal and group-level rewards. You can unlock mystery boxes and themed reward collections based on student goals and achievements.
How we built it
We used React + TypeScript for an interactive dashboard. All user and flat data is simulated with JSON in localStorage. For AI, we integrated Google Gemini to build semi-agentic reasoning; agents analyze finance data and suggest targets, swaps, or optimizations. Bubu points are calculated automatically (e.g., 5% cashback for rent payments), and dashboards show balances, reward progress, and shared flat goals.
Challenges we ran into
Balancing individual development was tough
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Built a fully functional finance prototype entirely in React, successfully implemented agentic AI reasoning for personalized recommendations, created a team-based reward system that encourages collaboration, and made a finance tool that feels interactive and social, not just a spreadsheet.
What we learned
How to design agentic AI systems that proactively analyze data and give advice, how Gemini can reason over structured and unstructured data for actionable insights, the impact of gamification on user engagement and motivation, and that you can simulate complex finance logic entirely with JSON for prototyping.
What's next for Lafufu Finance
Expand to multi-agent setups for each flatmate to negotiate contributions and shared goals, integrate real-world APIs like Student Beans or local deals to provide live discounts, add more visuals and interactivity, such as animated characters and mystery boxes, explore voice feedback using AI for progress updates and reminders, and consider hosting on a scalable backend like DigitalOcean Gradient to support persistent storage and real-time AI calculations.
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