Inspiration

During heightened India–Pakistan tensions, a close friend living near the border told me how terrifying it was to hear distant shelling — while people online shared memes about it. For her, those jokes didn’t feel funny. They felt like no one understood.

She needed a space where her fear could be expressed — and heard.

That moment inspired Together.

Today, people in Ukraine, Iran, Israel, and other regions are quietly carrying emotional weight. Together was built for them — a space to feel seen, and a way for the world to listen when it matters most.


What it does

Together is a safe, anonymous space where people can share how they’re feeling during times of conflict or tension. It’s not about going viral — it’s about being real.

Users can post emotions without logging personal details. Behind the scenes, AI analyzes the emotional content and tags each post with its dominant feeling and location.

NGOs and support groups have access to a dashboard that shows where emotional distress is rising — grief in one region, anxiety in another — so they can understand what people are going through and respond more thoughtfully.


How I built it

I used Bolt to create the full app experience, combining UI logic blocks and external tools like:

  • Supabase for storing user posts securely
  • OpenAI API for analyzing emotion from each submission

Each post runs through an AI layer that returns the emotion and confidence level. That result is stored with the post, and the NGO dashboard updates in real time with trends by region.

All this was built and connected inside Bolt — fast, clean, and entirely solo.


Challenges I ran into

Getting emotion detection to work well across cultures was a challenge. Tiny changes in how prompts were written made big differences in how the AI interpreted things.

I also had to carefully design the app to protect user anonymity, without losing important context like region and emotion type. Testing that system end-to-end — from post to dashboard — took a few rebuilds.

And building everything solo meant I had to juggle frontend, backend, AI, and testing all at once. Not easy, but worth it.


Accomplishments that I'm proud of

  • Built a complete, functioning platform in just a few days
  • Achieved real-time emotional tracking and visual feedback for NGOs
  • Designed a UI that feels safe, calming, and human — even when the subject is hard

It’s simple, but it works. And it feels like something that could really help.


What I learned

I learned that designing good prompts is as much about empathy as it is about logic.

Working with Bolt showed me how fast ideas can come to life — especially when paired with powerful APIs like OpenAI. But I also learned how important it is to think about ethics, anonymity, and emotional safety when building something like this.

Every small design choice had to feel right — and that made me slow down and think more deeply about users.


What’s next for Together

This version of Together is just the start.

  • I want to let NGOs log in securely, using access codes to view only the regions they serve.
  • I’ll build features for crisis alerts, downloadable reports, and emotion timelines.
  • I want to expand to more regions, but also add multilingual support so people can share in their native languages.
  • And most of all — I want this to feel like a place people return to. Not because they have to. But because it helps.

Built With

  • bolt
  • supabase
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