Life-Hard: Travel Budget Automation

Inspiration

Traveling can be expensive and requires careful planning, especially when working within a budget. We wanted to create a smart solution that automates savings management and generates personalized travel itineraries using AI, making travel planning easier and more accessible.

What it does

Life-Hard integrates with Bunq's API to monitor your savings pot. When your savings reach a predefined threshold, it uses AI to generate a detailed travel itinerary based on your budget, destination, and travel preferences. It ensures you can plan trips without overspending.

How we built it

Backend: Built using Python, leveraging the Bunq SDK to interact with the Bunq API for savings pot management.
AI Integration: Integrated with a local LLM (e.g., gemma3:1b) to generate travel itineraries based on user inputs and budget.
Polling Mechanism: Implemented a real-time polling system to monitor savings pot balance and trigger itinerary generation when conditions are met.
Web Interface(work in progress): Designed a simple HTML form with JavaScript for dynamic updates to display itineraries.

Challenges we ran into

API Integration: Understanding and implementing the Bunq API for savings pot management was initially challenging.
LLM Response Handling: Ensuring the AI-generated itineraries were relevant and detailed required fine-tuning the prompts.
Real-Time Updates: Implementing a reliable polling mechanism to monitor savings pot changes without overloading the API

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Bunq's API was successfully integrated to automate savings management.
Seamlessly generated detailed travel itineraries using AI.
Created a robust system that automates travel planning end-to-end ## What we learned
How to work with financial APIs like Bunq for savings management.
The importance of crafting effective prompts for AI models to generate meaningful outputs.
Techniques for building real-time systems that monitor and respond to changes in data.

What's next for Life-Hard: Travel Budget Automation

Enhanced Itineraries: Integrate external APIs (e.g., flights, hotels) to provide real-time travel options.
Mobile App: Develop a mobile app for easier access and notifications.
Collaborative Planning: Allow multiple users to collaborate on a shared itinerary.
Savings Insights: Provide analytics and insights to help users save more effectively for future trips.
Global Expansion: Support multiple currencies and localized travel recommendations.