Siempre: Keeping Their Stories Alive with Open-Source AI
This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine What I Built Siempre ( "Some stories deserve to stay" ) is a private, AI-powered digital memorial and living ofrenda inspired by Día de los Muertos and personal remembrance traditions. The Interpretatio
Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge: Ghost in the Machine Submission 👻🌼
This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine
Siempre ( "Some stories deserve to stay" ) is a private, AI-powered digital memorial and living ofrenda inspired by Día de los Muertos and personal remembrance traditions.
As Halloween and Día de los Muertos approach on November 1st and 2nd, tradition holds that the boundary between past and present grows thin. But our digital tools often treat memory with cold sterility—a forgotten folder of JPEGs in the cloud or a detached chat interface.
Instead of building another hollow chatbot pretending to channel the dead, I built a tactile, warm, and reverent digital altar where family memories, authentic voices, favorite foods, and heirloom objects remain alive. Every object on the altar has a true story behind it:
🔗 Live Application: https://siempre-mauve.vercel.app/
(Tip: You can also test the full interactive experience locally with sample data by running./start.sh or exploring the pre-seeded "Abuela Elena Rosales" demonstration memorial.)
"Some stories deserve to stay." A little place for the people who will always be with us.
Siempre is a private, AI-powered digital memorial and living ofrenda inspired by Día de los Muertos traditions. It preserves family memories, photographs, spoken stories, heirloom objects, favorite foods, songs, and remembrance notes.
Built with an artisanal, scrapbook-inspired visual design, authentic SVG artwork, and a local-first open-source AI architecture that guarantees personal memories stay securely on your computer.
The Interactive Ofrenda (Altar Workspace):