Lunch & Ship

Inspiration

Lunch is a natural break in a team’s day, but getting there often means juggling food preferences, group orders, and unfinished work. I wanted to connect those routines through a simple challenge: what could a team ship while waiting for lunch? Lunch & Ship gives two agents one shared deadline. One coordinates lunch, while the other helps the team focus on useful work that fits the time available.

What it does

The Lunch Agent recommends restaurants based on team preferences, dietary needs, budget, and delivery estimates. It prepares a group order for the organizer to approve. The Build Agent reviews project activity and recommends a short sprint, including tasks, pull request reviews, and blockers to address before lunch arrives. A shared dashboard brings together the countdown, recommendations, progress, and agent activity. The current prototype uses simulated orders and repository events. Its results distinguish demo activity from integration-verified work.

How I built it

I built the interactive prototype with Frevana around a four-person team preparing to launch an analytics dashboard. The demo includes meal recommendations, order approval, a sprint plan, a simulated CI failure, progress updates, and a final results card. I also created Byte, a lunchbox robot mascot, to guide viewers through the experience. The demo video combines screenshots of the prototype with locally animated gestures, blinking, speech-linked mouth motion, captions, and sound effects. I used Runway to generate the conversational narration.

Challenges I ran into

The main design challenge was making lunch coordination and software development feel like one coherent workflow. The delivery deadline gave both agents a shared purpose and made the sprint easy to understand. Another challenge was presenting simulated progress honestly. A demo can show a merged pull request or completed task without proving that the work happened in a connected repository. I kept those events labeled and separated the projected demo score from the verified score. For the video, I needed character animation without a paid video-generation plan. I animated Byte locally and used close-ups and captions to make the interface easier to follow.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I turned an unusual idea into a complete flow, from choosing lunch to reviewing what the team accomplished. The prototype makes the agents’ recommendations and activity visible, gives the organizer control over order approval, and keeps simulated results clear. Byte also gives the demo a recognizable personality while helping explain the workflow.

What I learned

A shared deadline can make an agent experience more focused. It gives recommendations a practical constraint: choose work that matters and can fit into the available time. I also learned that trust depends on clear evidence. Users should be able to tell what an agent suggested, what someone reported, and what a connected service verified. Building the video reinforced how much pacing, voice, and visual focus affect whether a product idea is easy to understand.

What's next for Lunch & Ship

The next step is connecting the Build Agent to real repository activity so it can use current issues, pull requests, and CI results. I also want to connect lunch services while preserving explicit approval before any purchase. From there, I plan to make sprint recommendations respond to changing delivery estimates, improve task estimates, and validate progress through integrations. Testing with real teams will help determine whether the challenge makes the time before lunch more useful—and more fun.

Built With

• frevana