🧠 About the Project – TasteMatch

💡 Inspiration

We noticed that most recommendation platforms depend on user profiling, cookies, or tracking — which compromises privacy.
We were inspired to create something different: a culturally intelligent search engine that works on plain natural language prompts, without collecting any personal data.

When we discovered Qloo’s Taste AI™, we realized it perfectly fits this vision. It empowers intelligent, domain-aware recommendations using AI — no user history needed. That’s how TasteMatch was born.

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🔍 What it does

TasteMatch is a Single Page Application that allows users to:

• Log in securely using Firebase Authentication
• Enter natural language queries (like “Suggest a romantic movie”)
• Get back real-time, culturally-aware recommendations from Qloo’s API
• Explore recommendations across music, fashion, books, dining, and more
• Enjoy all this with zero personal data collection

It's simple, fast, and fully privacy-respecting.

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🏗️ How we built it

• Frontend: HTML5, CSS3, Vanilla JavaScript
• Authentication: Firebase Auth (Email/Password)
• API Integration: Qloo Hackathon Search API
• Hosting: Firebase Hosting (GCP)
• Architecture: Single Page Application (SPA)

We used the Firebase CLI to deploy the app and securely store API integration logic in the frontend, working entirely within free-tier limits.

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🧱 Challenges we ran into

• ✅ Configuring Firebase Hosting correctly: wrong directory settings initially caused default "Welcome" pages instead of loading the actual app.
• ✅ Managing API key restrictions and CORS policies during development.
• ✅ Ensuring smooth error handling and loading UX for user queries.
• ✅ Keeping the app lightweight and responsive without any frameworks.

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🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Fully functional and deployed SPA without a backend
• Seamless Firebase + Qloo API integration
• Clean, user-friendly UI with real-time search
• Built a working demo that aligns 100% with our original privacy-first goal
• Deployed at: https://tastematch-d147e.web.app

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📚 What we learned

• How to work with Firebase Authentication and Hosting
• Best practices for calling third-party APIs from the frontend
• How to design for privacy-first user experience
• How to debug deployment issues using Firebase CLI
• Strengthened knowledge of SPA structure and user state management

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🔮 What's next for TasteMatch – AI search results

• 🌍 Add location-aware filtering using browser geolocation (optional)
• 📱 Convert into a Progressive Web App (PWA) for mobile use
• 🧠 Build AI prompt suggestions for users who are unsure what to search
• 🌐 Add support for more languages to make it globally accessible
• 💬 Integrate chat-style UI using LLM for search conversation flow

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TasteMatch – Your search, your vibe, powered by Qloo.

Built With

• ai-powered-cultural-recommendations-**tools**:-**firebase-cli**-?-for-project-setup-and-deployment-**vs-code**-?-code-editor-**github**-?-version-control-and-code-hosting-?-no-backend-server
• and-reliable-deployment-**apis**:-**qloo-hackathon-search-api**-?-to-fetch-real-time
• css
• firebase-authentication
• firebase-hosting
• framework-free-spa)-**platforms-&-cloud-services**:-**firebase-authentication**-?-for-secure-email/password-login-**firebase-hosting**-?-for-free
• html
• javascript
• no-database
• qloo