HotShot

This is the best way to find your true colors, proven with real-world clothes to try on virtually and go to the exact shop item from the app directly, providing monetization option.

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Inspiration

People struggle to find pieces that actually suit them. And shopping itself is a waste of time for me. I don't want to go, and I don't want to try on more than two shirts before I get annoyed and leave. Color analysis is supposed to fix the first part, but it costs a lot.

What it does

One selfie. HotShot reads your skin, hair, eye, lip and brow colors, maps them to one of twelve color seasons, and gives you a palette of colors to wear and colors to skip. The app not only shows the colors, but puts the shirts on you for a proof. You can try any of them on your own photo before you buy.

How we built it

SwiftUI, iOS 26

  • The capture screen uses Vision on the phone to reject photos with no face, more than one face, a turned head or bad light before anything is sent. The YouCam analyzer wants the face to fill 60 percent of the frame, so the app crops to that itself.
  • The selfie goes to YouCam's skin tone analysis endpoint. The five color readings come back and a small rules engine I wrote turns them into a season.
  • The two proof tees and every shop try-on use the cloth try-on endpoint (v4, upper body).
  • A tiny Vercel proxy holds the API key, caps try-ons at 15 per device, and refunds one if YouCam returns an error. In Debug the key is in the build so judges can run it with nothing but Xcode.

Challenges we ran into

Showing the first try-on as early as possible without burying the user in explanation first. The flow is now four onboarding cards, one photo, and the proof is the second screen you see.

The API takes 10 to 30 seconds per render. I spent a lot of time on the waiting screen so it doesn't feel broken.

The tees for the proof renders didn't exist until the day before I recorded the demo.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The proof screen. Analysis is abstract until you see yourself in the wrong red next to the right one. That is the moment people get it.

And the analysis isn't a dead end: it feeds straight into a ranked catalog with real products, a wishlist and a buy link.

What we learned

Building was never the hard part. Building the right thing, and shipping it in time, is. One feature that lands is way better a hundred average ones.

What's next for HotShot

  • Your own wardrobe, with daily suggestions based on the weather
  • Full-body try-ons
  • Discount alerts for the pieces that actually suit you

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