Sodalis

Inspiration

Our grandparents have so many stories to tell and love hearing about our lives, but they often don't call because they don't want to be a burden to us, so instead they quietly stay lonely. We built Sodalis so they always have someone to talk to, and so we never miss the moments when they'd love to hear from us.

What it does

Sodalis is an AI companion that calls older adults every day and keeps their family close. Family members join with their loved one's phone number and share their interests, skills, and the things they enjoy doing together. Sodalis, a friendly voice agent, calls the elder each day to chat about their day. After the call, Google Gemini reads the conversation to spot moments for the family, like "she has too many zucchini" or "she misses Maya", and flags anything worrying, like loneliness or a fall. For each moment, Gemini picks the best family member and a time that fits their free time and calendar, and sends them a notification to accept or decline.

How we built it

Vapi runs the voice calls. Google Gemini turns each transcript into ideas for the family, wellbeing alerts, and the choice of who should visit and when. Supabase stores the elders, family profiles, calls and alerts, and updates the family dashboard live. Firebase sends push notifications for urgent concerns and visit suggestions. The web app is built with Next.js, deployed on Vercel, and installs on a phone like an app.

Challenges we ran into

Our first challenge was agreeing on an idea we were all excited about, and then dividing the work by each person's strengths, interests and skills. Since we'd never worked together before, each of us had to keep up with our own part while also helping teammates with theirs. We learned Vapi from scratch and researched system design to choose a tech stack that worked well without costing much. Calendars were the hardest feature: Google sign-in only gave us busy times, so we switched to uploading an exported Google Calendar that families can actually see. We also had to learn when to lead as an engineer and when to let Claude do the coding.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

For one of our teammates, this was their first hackathon, and we finished it together with a working product, built end to end, from the voice calls to the family's dashboard. We dove into an AI-focused project, learned how AI agents work, and learned to build alongside Claude as a coding partner. We teamed up with people we'd never met, learned how to work as a team, and kept bringing in new ideas to improve our workflow and help each other learn. Some of us also stepped beyond engineering, taking on product management and UI/UX design to shape how Sodalis looks and feels.

What we learned

We learned how to build with Vapi, from setting up a voice agent to handling what happens after each call. We researched system design to find the best tech stack we could while staying mindful of cost. We learned to set up a Supabase environment, connect it to our schema, and find our way around the database to understand what each part does. We also learned when to step back from being the lead engineer and let Claude take on the coding, so we could focus on the product, the design and the big picture.

What's next for Sodalis

Next, we want to text grandma a friendly reminder when a family member is coming to visit, so she has something to look forward to. We'll let families plan group events, not just one-on-one visits, and give nurses and caregivers a way to add updates too. We also want to make sure elders never feel that sharing their thoughts is a burden on their children, so we'll explore how Sodalis can make opening up feel natural and welcome. Adding more languages will help every elder talk in the language they're most comfortable in. To reach the people who need it most, we plan to visit retirement homes and senior centres to spread awareness and hear directly from elders and their families.