SayLess

Inspiration

We all know what we want to say, but finding the right tone for a professor, a teammate or a friend can take longer than writing the message.

What it does

SayLess rewrites your message in the tone you pick (Professional, Casual, Diplomatic or Funny) and gives you three options to copy, all keeping your original meaning.

How we built it

We built an HTML, CSS and JavaScript frontend and a Java Spring Boot backend that calls the Google Gemini API, keeps the API key on the server, and checks every AI response before showing it.

Challenges we ran into

With four people building separate pieces, our code drifted apart until we wrote one shared contract in the repo that everyone followed.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

In our live tests, all 16 test messages kept their details, like dates and names, in every tone, with responses in under a second, and 237 automated tests back it up

What we learned

Don't blindly trust AI output: asking Gemini for structured JSON and checking it on the server is what makes the app reliable.

What's next for SayLess

We want to stop the AI from adding details users never wrote, then add more languages, a browser extension for use in Gmail and Slack, and a public deployment with rate limiting.