Maitri

Talk, vent, heal. AI-powered mental wellness

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🌱 MAITRI – A Mental Wellness Companion for Indian Students

💡 Inspiration

College life in India isn’t easy. Academic pressure, placements, competitive exams, financial stress, family expectations, hostel loneliness, and fear of failure often pile up at the same time. Mental health struggles don’t wait for convenient moments — they hit during exams, late nights, internships, or even when surrounded by people.

For many Indian students, getting timely mental health support is difficult:

  • Mental health is still a taboo topic
  • Professional help is expensive or inaccessible
  • Friends may not always understand
  • Sometimes, students just don’t know who to talk to

MAITRI — meaning “loving-kindness” in Sanskrit — was created to fill this gap.
It is a safe, non-judgmental AI companion that listens patiently, responds with empathy, and feels as natural as talking to a trusted friend.

🧠 What MAITRI Does

MAITRI is an AI-powered mental wellness companion designed especially for students. It offers:

  • 💬 Text-based chat with emotion-aware, empathetic responses
  • 🎙️ Real-time voice conversations for natural, hands-free interaction
  • 🔮 3D interactive visualization — a calming, glowing orb that reacts to your voice
  • 🌬️ Evidence-based wellness techniques:
    • Breathing exercises
    • Grounding techniques
    • Mindfulness prompts
  • 🚨 Critical distress detection to recognize when professional or external help may be required

🛠️ How We Built MAITRI

🎨 Frontend

  • React 19 with Vite for fast and smooth performance
  • Glassmorphism UI for a calming, premium experience
  • Three.js with React Three Fiber for the 3D audio-reactive orb

⚙️ Backend

  • Node.js and Express
  • WebSockets for real-time, bidirectional voice communication

🤖 AI Core

  • Google Gemini 2.5 Flash integrated via LangChain
  • Context-aware and therapeutic response generation

🔊 Voice Pipeline

  • Deepgram Nova-2 for speech-to-text
  • Deepgram Aura for natural, human-like text-to-speech

🎧 Audio Processing

  • Custom real-time audio streaming using WebSockets
  • Efficient audio chunk handling for low-latency responses

⚠️ Challenges We Faced

  • Audio data handling
    Streaming raw audio over WebSockets caused byte-alignment issues, requiring careful buffer and Int16Array management.

  • Real-time synchronization
    Coordinating the Speech → AI → Voice pipeline with minimal latency while preserving conversational context.

  • Voice UI/UX design
    Designing intuitive Start/Stop controls and visual feedback that felt natural during voice interactions.

  • Prompt engineering
    Crafting responses that felt genuinely supportive without being generic, robotic, or dismissive.

🏆 Accomplishments We’re Proud Of

  • Built a fully functional voice-first AI companion with sub-second response times
  • Created a stunning 3D audio-reactive orb that brings the AI to life
  • Seamlessly integrated multiple advanced AI services into a single experience
  • Designed a calming, therapeutic glassmorphism-based UI
  • Implemented real-time bidirectional voice streaming from scratch using WebSockets

📚 What We Learned

  • The importance of handling edge cases in audio streaming (byte alignment, buffering, error recovery)
  • How to build fast, real-time AI pipelines that feel instant to users
  • The nuances of designing responsible therapeutic AI systems
  • Leveraging Three.js and React Three Fiber for immersive yet performant 3D visuals
  • The power of WebSockets for building truly interactive voice applications

🔮 What’s Next for MAITRI

  • 😊 Emotion detection via camera
    Analyze facial expressions to proactively offer support based on detected mood

  • 📊 Mood tracking dashboard
    Visualize emotional trends over time with insights and recommendations

  • 🌐 Multi-language support
    Support for Indian languages such as Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and more

  • 📱 Mobile application
    Native Android and iOS apps for on-the-go mental wellness support

  • 🔒 Privacy-first architecture
    Local processing options to protect sensitive user conversations

  • 🤝 Professional integration
    Tools for therapists and counselors to supplement their practice with AI assistance

💙 Closing Note

MAITRI is more than just an application.
It is a compassionate companion for Indian students navigating pressure, uncertainty, and growth — reminding them that they are never alone.

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