YATA | Devpost

Inspiration

While brainstorming relatable pain points, we realized that nearly half our team struggles with impulsive spending. We wanted a simple tool that helps interrupt spontaneous purchases before they happen, not after the damage is done. As the saying goes what get measured gets managed!

What It Does

YATA has four core features:

Swipe-based classification
Inspired by Tinder, users swipe transactions as necessary or unnecessary. This removes the friction of complex budgeting systems and focuses on fast, intuitive decision-making.
Location-based nudges
By tracking past unnecessary purchases and their merchants, the app sends a notification when a user enters a store where they’ve historically overspent. This makes the app proactive rather than reactive.
Cross-app tracking
Since many impulse purchases happen online, YATA monitors which apps are currently in use. If the user opens an app linked to past unnecessary spending, the app sends a gentle reminder to stay intentional.
Bank connectivity
YATA connects securely to bank accounts using Plaid, allowing the app to work with real transaction data.

How We Built It

We built YATA as a mobile app to maximize real-world impact. The app uses Ionic with React for the frontend and TypeScript for the backend. We started with Figma to design the experience and iterated quickly from there.

Challenges We Faced

One major challenge was iOS platform restrictions. Apple limits background activity and cross-app visibility, which made some features difficult to implement. As a result, we focused primarily on Android, which offers greater system-level access.

Another challenge was bank integration. Plaid requires a compliance review to access real user accounts. While we couldn’t complete that process in time, Plaid’s sandbox environment allowed us to build and demo the full experience.

Accomplishments We’re Proud Of

Location-based and cross-app tracking
Real-time, proactive notifications

What We Learned

We learned that impactful products don’t need to be complex. By focusing on a clear, relatable problem and solving it simply, we were able to build something genuinely useful.

What’s Next for YATA

Our next steps are completing Plaid’s compliance process and using YATA in our daily lives. We believe this approach to spending awareness can help many people make better financial decisions.