Inspiration Our team was inspired by the real struggles that animal shelters and foster programs face when handing off pet care between different volunteers. We saw how confusing spreadsheets, messy text chains, and lost emails could lead to missed feedings, forgotten medication, or miscommunications that directly affect animal well-being. We wanted to create something that made it easy, clear, and safe for volunteers to update pet care information in one place.
What We Learned Throughout this project, we learned how powerful simple solutions can be when you focus on real-world problems. We gained hands-on experience with web development, building a full-stack application that connects frontend and backend smoothly. We also learned how to integrate AI into a web platform responsibly, offering helpful support without replacing human decision-making.
How We Built It We built PawPass using Flask for the backend and HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the frontend. We used SQLAlchemy with a SQLite database to store pet profiles, care updates, and checklist completions. Our AI chatbot was integrated using Google's generative AI services to help volunteers find pet info quickly or ask general care questions. The site was designed to be lightweight, mobile-friendly, and color-blind accessible. We made sure it included default care checklists and an emergency flag for high-need pets.
Challenges We Faced One major challenge was ensuring that updates across volunteer shifts remained clear and traceable without overwhelming users with too much information at once. We also faced technical challenges setting up the AI chatbot, especially handling errors smoothly when API access failed. Another challenge was managing database updates when new fields were added during the hackathon, requiring us to carefully handle migrations without breaking existing features. Through all of it, communication and fast problem-solving helped us push through and build something we are really proud of. (There is a problem in description, Anushka Boran facing issues)
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