NatureQuest 🌿: I Built a Local AI That Turns Curiosity Into Outdoor Adventures
This is my submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge — Week 1: Touch Grass. What I Built: NatureQuest is a local AI-powered nature exploration app designed to turn free time into small outdoor adventures. The idea is simple: instead of spending more time scrolling through a screen,
Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿
This is my submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge — Week 1: Touch Grass.
NatureQuest is a local AI-powered nature exploration app designed to turn free time into small outdoor adventures. The idea is simple: instead of spending more time scrolling through a screen, what if an app could give you a reason to step outside, notice your surroundings, and discover something new?
Users can generate outdoor mini-adventures based on their available time, setting, interests, and energy level. Each quest includes three missions, a safety reminder, and a reflection prompt. Users can mark missions as complete and revisit their saved adventures through the journal.
Screenshots from the working application:
Video demo: [ https://drive.google.com/file/d/17DcFQxwH9okToo4M1pp7rBj5_gnH4W4q/view?usp=sharing ]
The demo shows personalized outdoor quest generation, AI-powered Curiosity Capture, and the adventure journal popup.
NatureQuest currently runs locally. Instructions for setting it up on your own machine are available in the repository README.
GitHub repository: https://github.com/kunalGupta5780/NatureQuest
The repository includes the FastAPI backend, frontend files, installation instructions, and screenshots.
/api/quest generates a personalized outdoor adventure using Gemma and provides a rule-based fallback when the local model is unavailable. /api/discover accepts an image and a curiosity note, sends them to the local model, and returns a structured discovery report.
The frontend displays the generated quests, mission completion states, photo discoveries, and an adventure journal that saves quest details in browser storage.
I also added safeguards for image upload types and file size, along with targeted corrections for issues encountered during testing.
Testing revealed that AI-generated answers can still contain scientific mistakes. For example, an illustrated chart grouped spiders with insects. I added a clarification safeguard because spiders are arachnids, not insects. I also adjusted follow-up quest handling to discourage unnecessary collection of natural objects.
These safeguards are targeted improvements, not a guarantee that every AI response will be correct. Curiosity Capture communicates uncertainty, but users should still verify important scientific claims.
I don't have a shareable DevRelay session link to include, so I'm leaving this optional section out.