Wanderlast

Inspiration

I love to travel, but planning trips often eats up more time than the trip itself. Between juggling tabs, figuring out group preferences, and trying to remember what I Googled two nights ago, I wanted something simpler — a smart travel companion that helps you dream, decide, and document it all in one place. Thus, Wanderlast was born: an AI-powered travel sidekick that thinks, remembers, and speaks like a co-pilot.

What it does

Wanderlast is an AI trip planner with a conversational interface. It helps you:

• Chat with an AI agent to get travel suggestions • Plan trips with an intuitive step-by-step flow (destination, timeline, group type, travel style) • Use voice input/output for hands-free interaction (via ElevenLabs and Web Speech API) • Store and revisit plans with persistent trip memory • Explore activities based on your preferences (coming soon!)

It’s your travel buddy — but smarter, chattier, and always ready to help.

How I built it

Wanderlast was built solo during the hackathon using Bolt for rapid prototyping with React and Tailwind CSS. It integrates ElevenLabs for rich voice output and uses Supabase for backend logic and storage. The entire experience is designed for usability and delight.

Test it out with these log in credentials: email: wanderlastprofile@gmail.com password: Bolt2025

Challenges we ran into

• Voice input struggles on mobile (speech recognition worked well on desktop, but mobile permissions and browser quirks made it buggy) • Chat summary not triggering for long messages — frustrating when trying to summarise voice output • Sticky layout weirdness — fixing scroll behaviour between the chat container, input bar, and nav bar, trips flow took some serious CSS wrangling • Token management on Bolt — had to prioritise features within the usage limit • Hackathon time pressure — solo builds are a sprint marathon!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Fully working Trip creation flow • Integrated voice output with ElevenLabs and added memory-friendly summaries • Created a beautiful, branded UI with sidebar navigation, FAB interactions, and themed styling • Built a full user journey — from dreaming up a trip to starting the planning • Made something that actually feels fun to use

What we learned

• How to wrangle AI voice input/output on the web (not as plug-and-play as it sounds!) • The power of Supabase and how fast it is to get a backend running • Bolt is a game-changer for rapid prototyping • Always scope your idea just a little smaller than you think — polish matters more than feature creep • AI is incredible, but design is what makes it feel like magic

What's next for Wanderlast

• Add more to Explore detail views for restaurants, activities, and events • Build the Memoir feature — a place to save travel memories, photos, and notes • Polish the logged-out landing page • Improve mobile voice input reliability • Release as a web app with optional paid subscription

Built With

• 11labs
• bolt
• google
• netlify
• openai
• placesapi
• supabase