TouchGrass AI: Using Open-Source AI to Turn Screen Time into Green Time

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

🌿 TouchGrass AI — Less Screen Time, More Green Time

TouchGrass AI is an AI-powered web application designed to encourage people to spend less time on screens and more time exploring the outdoors.

In today's digital world, students, developers, remote workers, and many others spend hours using their devices. TouchGrass AI aims to turn that screen time into an opportunity to discover real-world experiences.

The application suggests outdoor activities based on the user's mood, available time, location, and interests. It also includes outdoor challenges, progress tracking, and a personal activity journal to encourage users to build healthier digital habits.

The main idea is simple: instead of using AI to keep people on their screens, use AI to inspire them to step outside.

🌐 Live Website: https://shivsi3399.github.io/Touchgrass-ai/

The project is deployed using GitHub Pages.

💻 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/Shivsi3399/Touchgrass-ai

The frontend is hosted on GitHub Pages, while the AI model runs separately through Ollama. Using the AI features requires a compatible local Ollama setup.

Open innovation makes AI more accessible to developers, students, and independent creators.

By using an open-weight model with local inference, I could experiment with AI-powered features without making a paid, proprietary cloud API the core of the application. It allowed me to explore prompt design, API integration, structured AI responses, and the practical process of connecting a language model to a web application.

Local inference can also help keep activity preferences on the user's device when the application is configured to communicate only with the local model. This provides an opportunity to build more privacy-conscious applications.

Most importantly, open tools allow other developers to inspect the code, learn from the implementation, customize the experience, and contribute improvements.

TouchGrass AI demonstrates how open AI technology can be used for something beyond generating text: encouraging people to reconnect with nature and develop a healthier balance between technology and real life.

I don't have a public DevRelay agent-session link to share yet.

This project explores the use of an open-weight language model through local inference with Ollama.

I'll verify the challenge rules before selecting any additional partner-specific prize categories.