I Built an AI That Wants You to Stop Using It — Meet SIDEQUEST 🌿

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

An offline-first AI quest machine designed to become a physical device that prints real-world adventures.

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass

I'm a software developer, so most of my day happens in front of a screen. And after work? More screens — learning new technologies, building side projects, or scrolling through social media.

Here's the funny part: throughout the summer, I was hiking in the Tatras almost every weekend, climbing mountains over 2,000 meters high. But as autumn arrived, I got so caught up in work and tech projects that some days I struggled to convince myself to even go for a short walk.

And most solutions to excessive screen time involve... another app.

So I started wondering: What if AI could help us disconnect instead of giving us another reason to stay online?

SIDEQUEST is a software prototype for a physical, offline-first AI quest machine.

Imagine a small device on your desk with a tiny display, directional buttons, a big PRINT button, and a thermal receipt printer.

You choose your preferences, press PRINT, and a locally running AI model generates a personalized real-world adventure. A paper receipt comes out with three objectives.

Take the receipt. Leave the screen. Touch grass.

No phone needed during the quest. No notifications. No endless feed.

The current version is a browser-based simulation of this future device, built to test the AI quest engine and gameplay before developing the hardware.

Choose a duration (15, 30, or 60 minutes), an environment (City, Park, Nature, or Anywhere), and a mode (Calm, Move, Explore, or Surprise).

Gemma 3 4B, running locally through Ollama, generates a quest with exactly three real-world objectives, displayed as a retro-style receipt.

After completing a quest, you can return to earn XP, unlock badges, and build a daily streak.

There's also Doomscroll Escape — a shortcut that generates a 15-minute surprise quest when you catch yourself scrolling without a purpose.

The gamification is deliberately lightweight: it should motivate you to go outside, not keep you interacting with the machine.

The best SIDEQUEST session is the one where you spend almost no time using SIDEQUEST.

The demo shows the current browser-based prototype, including local AI quest generation and the receipt-printing animation. The long-term vision is to bring this experience to a standalone physical device.

Print a quest. Leave the screen. Touch grass.

SIDEQUEST is the software prototype of a future physical AI-powered quest dispenser — a small desk device that generates personalized real-world adventures and prints them on thermal paper.

The vision is simple: press a button, receive a quest, and walk away from your screen. No endless feeds, no notifications, no app demanding your attention.

The current implementation is a browser-based simulation of that device, powered by a locally running open-weight AI model. It brings together the quest generation engine, receipt-style interface, and gamification system — with the long-term goal of moving the experience into dedicated hardware.

AI that gets you offline, not AI that keeps you online.

Built for the Hacktoberfest 2026 — Touch Grass Challenge.