We drew inspiration from the nostalgia of the classic Tamagotchi toys that were popular in the late 1900s and early 2000s to create a digital assistant for managing a virtual pet, blending old-school charm with modern technology. Our focus was to not only provide a form of entertainment but to be able to enhance student education with additional items and features.
gotchi.ai functions as a virtual pet assistant, allowing users to interact with and care for a digital pet through activities like feeding and monitoring its well-being. In addition, it also provides features that support educational study aids like a Pomodoro timer, an interactive voice-activated AI chat, an AI-powered text summarizer, memo pads, and more.
gotchi.ai relies on some of the most cutting-edge technological frameworks to power its all-knowing AI toolset. On the front end, our team leveraged ReactJS with its many libraries and frameworks to display our retro-inspired user interface, ensuring a seamless and interactive user experience. On the back end, gotchi.ai uses Node.js and express.js to manage API calls to Cohere's LLM, enabling voice AI chats, commands, and summarizations. For storing the gotchi.ai user's notes, our team integrated a MongoDB backend, using its lightweight framework to easily store data.
During this hackathon, we faced several challenges that required problem-solving, pivoting, and teamwork. Initially, our team faced the issue of injecting react components into a web page through a Google Chrome extension. Despite our best efforts, it required a pivot into a more viable product. On the other hand, our team solved various problems, allowing us to realize our vision of gotchi.ai. This included deep dives into react features, allowing us to display our Tamagotchi and enable character selection. On the backend, enabling a generative chat and summarization feature using Cohere's API and a MongoDB backend required significant teamwork between each member, using every resource available to deliver on time.
As a team, some of the team's accomplishments include the numerous types of languages and technologies learned, the brainstorming process along the topic of nostalgia, and being able to create a fully functional Chrome extension app involving several technologies useful for students. Furthermore, being able to successfully implement AI into several components within our extension was a great accomplishment.
Across the team, each individual gained invaluable experience and skills that catered to the team's interests and needs. In addition, the aspect of team building, the ability to adapt to themes and situations, and problem-solving. Some of the technologies and skills the team was able to learn included React.js, Cohere API, MongoDB, and much more.
Looking ahead in the future, we plan to explore and implement several additional features that would be able to further enhance student studying and work habits. Alongside educational features, we are eager to continue to explore the world of AI and its impact on further supporting human needs.