wingman

Inspiration

Modern dating happens almost entirely online, and very little of it turns into real dates. Most matches never leave the chat. And when people do meet, it's often awkward, because the person across the table isn't someone they actually click with. Dating apps match on surface stuff like photos, height and job, not on what's underneath: values, humor, and how you see the world. We want dating to start offline again, with people who actually fit.

What it does

You talk to Wingman, a voice agent on your phone. It reads your social media (Letterboxd, Reddit, TikTok/Instagram saves) and what you tell it to understand who you really are. When someone in the room actually clicks with you, across taste, values, what you want, and humor, both of your Vexo bands light up. No photos, no swiping, no scores. Each of you raise your hand to say yes, and only if both do, you get a meeting spot and what they're wearing. Find each other, raise your bands together, and it's a match: the bands turn green&vibrare.

How we built it

Vexo Open bands: LEDs, tap and double-tap, and raise-hand detection through a Mac BLE bridge. Both bands raised at once confirms the match.
ElevenLabs Agents: the whole phone app is a voice. The agent drives the screen with client tools (accounts, profile, live cards).
Gemini + Mastra: a Mastra workflow builds each person's Taste Core, and a match agent returns structured overlaps across four dimensions, each labeled with where it came from.
WHOOP: live heart rate, shown only on the wearer's own phone.
Node WebSocket server running the night's state machine, plus a React frontend with a WebGL shape as the agent's face. ## Challenges we ran into
Matching on films alone felt shallow, so we rebuilt the matching around four dimensions with sources for every reason.
Reliable raise-together detection: a wrist already up from tapping "yes" kept triggering false matches.
Gemini calls take 15–20 seconds, so we built timeouts, a cache, and fallbacks so the live demo never stalls.
Keeping it private: looks preferences never reach the match agent, and heart rate never leaves your own phone. ## Accomplishments that we're proud of A full night working end to end, from voice onboarding to two bands turning green, with real AI and real hardware. And a product with no photos and no swiping that still feels magical. ## What we learned Hardware makes AI feel physical. A light on your wrist beats any notification. People share far more with a voice than with a form, and specific reasons ("you both rate slow cinema 5★") build more trust than any score. ## What's next for wingman Pilots at singles mixers, run clubs, and university events; more sources such as Spotify; proximity buzzing that gets faster as you get closer; and venue tools for hosts.