Monarch

🚀 About the Project – Velar

Velar is a luxury-themed personal finance app designed to empower users to manage their spending, track transactions, and make informed decisions with the help of AI—all while delivering a premium, elegant experience.

💡 Inspiration

The inspiration came from the gap between functional finance apps and aesthetically premium ones. Most tools prioritize utility over design, but we wanted to create an experience that feels like wealth—visually and interactively. We imagined what it would look like if managing your money felt like using a product designed by a luxury brand.

🧠 What We Learned

• Building intuitive financial tools isn't just about charts and data—it's about clear UX flow and visual communication.
• Implementing AI categorization using machine learning taught us how to process and train models on real-world financial transaction data.
• We learned about seamless integration between backend APIs and Flutter frontend while maintaining responsiveness and visual richness.

🛠️ How We Built It

• Frontend: Built using Flutter with a custom UI system designed for the 'Old Money' aesthetic – deep green-black base, golden accent colors, rounded components, and rich animations.
• Backend: Node.js with Express for managing transaction routes, user authentication, and AI categorization.
• AI Features: Trained a lightweight ML model to auto-categorize user transactions (Food, Travel, Shopping, etc.) based on descriptions.
• Visualization: Integrated charts and analytics to display spending trends and category breakdowns.
• Deployment: Locally tested with plans to integrate Firebase and GCP services for production scale.

⚔️ Challenges Faced

• Translucent UI & Layering: Achieving a blurred glass-like navbar that didn’t break interaction layers or cause layout constraints in Flutter was tricky.
• AI Training: Designing a model that works well with small data initially, then scales to learn user behavior dynamically.
• Maintaining Premium Aesthetics on Mobile: It was challenging to retain performance and responsiveness while using advanced visuals and layout structures.
• Consistent Theme across Components: Ensuring that every screen and widget followed the luxury look without visual fatigue required iteration and refinement.

🌟 Final Thoughts

Velar isn’t just a finance app—it’s a financial lifestyle experience. We aimed to redefine how users feel about tracking money—making it delightful, premium, and deeply personal.

Built With

• api
• flutter
• mongodb
• node.js