Roamie

Inspiration

While studying abroad, I discovered a huge love for traveling — not just seeing new places, but meeting new people along the way. That’s what inspired me to build Roamie: an app that makes it easy to connect with like-minded people who share your cultural tastes and want to explore the world too. Whether it's music, movies, books, or food — Roamie helps you match with people based on your personality and preferences so you can travel together, not just swipe aimlessly.

What it does

Roamie uses Qloo’s Taste AI API to match users based on shared cultural preferences. Users take a taste quiz that captures their favorite artists, books, and movies, and the app uses this to recommend compatible travel buddies and even generate a personalized travel itinerary using an LLM. Users can swipe through potential matches, chat, and start planning trips — all within a privacy-first, fun, Gen Z-friendly experience.

How we built it

Roamie was built using React Native with Expo for the mobile framework, Firebase for authentication and database storage, Qloo’s Taste AI API for generating recommendations, and groq to create personalized travel itineraries. The app includes real-time user matching, chat functionality, and an end-to-end taste quiz flow that pulls semantic data from Qloo and feeds it into the itinerary generator.

Challenges we ran into

There were a lot of components in this app — Google authentication, swiping logic, real-time chat, taste quiz flow, API calls, and LLM-generated content — and making sure each of them worked properly (and together!) took time. It was also a challenge to narrow down what features to build first, since I have so many ideas for Roamie. Picking a focused MVP and sticking to it was a key decision during the hackathon.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I’m proud of getting this entire cross-platform app working in just a few weeks, especially since I had never used React Native, Firebase, or Qloo before. The fact that I was able to integrate multiple APIs, build a functioning taste quiz and travel match system, and design a clean UI is something I’m really excited about.

What we learned

Almost every part of this tech stack was new to me. I had never used React Native before, let alone Expo, Firebase, or the Qloo API. I learned how to connect front-end components to real-time databases, how to design clean and modular components, and how to debug cross-platform behavior. I also learned how to work with LLMs in a structured, useful way that enhances user experience rather than just being a gimmick.

What's next for Roamie

This is just the beginning for Roamie. In the future, I plan to add a daily challenge calendar where users can unlock small travel missions like “ask a stranger to draw a map to their favorite café” or “snap a photo petting a stray kitten.” These moments would generate a shared digital memorybook, where users can tag their “trip twins” and look back on their adventures together. I also want to expand into location-based recommendations, group trip planning, and even fashion- or food-based matching.

Built With

• expo.io
• firebase
• groq
• qloo
• react-native
• tailwind
• vscode