RANE - Your Inner Weather for Emotional Clarity

Main Page 1
Main Page 2
Settings page
Login Page

Inspiration

Women often experience emotional overwhelm, brain fog, and burnout that doesn’t fit neatly into clinical labels or mood trackers. As a team of four women, we wanted address issues we have seen in our lives and the lives of our friends. A 2023 survey found 58% of women didn’t know what a normal menstrual cycle was and up to 70% of women with PCOS don’t even realize they have it (Sources in slideshow attached). Many existing mental health apps feel rigid, medicalized, or guilt-inducing—asking users to quantify emotions instead of understand them. We wanted to create something gentler: a space where emotional states are treated as temporary conditions, not personal failures. RANE was inspired by the idea that emotions, like weather, shift naturally—and that recognizing these patterns can bring clarity and compassion.

What it does

Using Gemini, RANE analyzes reflections to identify emotional signals and translates them into intuitive weather states such as fog (mental fatigue), storms (overwhelm), low tide (withdrawal), or clear skies (clarity). RANE then offers gentle, situational support—called “finding shelter”—through calming reflections, soft guidance, and optional voice-based coaching. By externalizing emotions through metaphor, RANE reduces shame, improves emotional literacy, and helps users feel grounded and understood in under two minutes. We integrated an ElevenLabs speech-to-speech agent trained on women's health, allowing users to hear calming, context-aware reflections and have a conversation surrounding their mental health and menstrual cycle.

How we built it

RANE was build with Node.js for the backend, React for the frontend, Auth0 for authentication (you can log in with Google!), Gemini API for interpretation (see above!) and MongoDB for data storage. We integrated ElevenLabs for accessibility and to enhance emotional presence.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was designing AI outputs that felt supportive without being prescriptive or clinical. We also faced technical challenges integrating health context and structuring Gemini prompts to remain empathetic, safe, and consistent. Balancing meaningful insights with hackathon time constraints required careful scoping and iteration.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of creating a fully functional, thoughtfully designed app that feels emotionally safe and genuinely calming. RANE’s poetic framing, inner weather system, and voice-based reflections make mental health support feel humane rather than transactional. By using Gemini for reflective intelligence and ElevenLabs for gentle voice guidance, we translate emotion into language that feels supportive and personal. We’re especially proud that our project centers women’s emotional experiences without pathologizing them.

** Also, our ElevenLabs agent works for multiple languages (english, spanish, etc)!!

What we learned

Through RANE, we learned how to design AI systems with ethical restraint and emotional intelligence. We expanded our skills across frontend design, backend architecture, AI prompt engineering, and multimodal experiences. Most importantly, we learned how metaphor, language, and design choices can deeply affect how users feel.

What's next for RANE - Your Inner Weather for Emotional Clarity

Only about 5 percent of total research and development funds worldwide are dedicated to women-focused conditions (Sources in slideshow attached). Next, we plan to take the data (with consent) and collaborate with trusted women's research labs to grow women's research. By doing this, it also eliminates the need for any "premium" features, making our app accessible to all. In the future we also plan to refine RANE based on user and judge feedback, improve pattern tracking over time, and explore integrations with cycle tracking and health data. We also hope to expand accessibility features and explore use cases in schools, workplaces, and wellness spaces—bringing more people access to soft skies within.