What I Built

Phone Guide is a small tool I built for my mom. She has a smartphone, but she isn't sure how apps work or what can go wrong with them. When I asked her which app confused her most, she said PhonePe.

Phone Guide explains an app in simple Hindi: what it is for, how to use it, what dangers to watch for, and one thing to never do. It also has an "Is this a scam?" button. She can paste a suspicious message, and it tells her in plain words whether to trust it and what to do next. A Listen button reads the answer aloud, because reading a long answer on a small screen is hard for many people.

How my mom reacted: She asked about PhonePe first, since that's the app she was least sure about. After she heard the explanation in Hindi, she felt good that she could now understand the app on her own, without having to ask someone each time. That feeling of confidence is why I built this.

Code

ankitsingh0101 / phone-guide

Phone Guide

Explains phone apps in simple Hindi (and a few other Indian languages), checks whether a message is a scam, and reads the answer aloud. Built for my mom, who asked me how to use PhonePe safely.

Built for the Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge: Build for a Friend (DEV), started and finished Oct 2-5, 2026.

Demo video: https://youtu.be/oxgzFcXjPHI

What it does

Explain this: type an app name (PhonePe, WhatsApp...) and get what it is for, how to use it, what dangers to watch for, and one thing to never do.
Is this a scam?: paste a suspicious SMS or message and get a plain verdict with what to do next.
Listen to the answer: reads the answer aloud using the browser's built-in voice.
Screenshot upload: attach a screenshot of a confusing screen and ask about it.
Languages: Hindi, English, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu.
Large text and big buttons, because…

View on GitHub

How I Built It

Model: Gemma 3 (4B, open-weight) running locally through Ollama.

Backend: a small Flask app that sends a simple-language prompt to Ollama. The prompt tells the model to answer only in the chosen language, use short sentences, and avoid jargon.

Frontend: one HTML page with large text and big buttons, made for someone new to smartphones. The Listen button uses the browser's built-in voice.

It supports Hindi, English, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, and Telugu, and can read a screenshot of a confusing screen.

I used an AI assistant (Claude) to help write and debug the code. The model inside the app is Gemma, running on my own laptop.

A bug I caught: in one test, the scam checker ended its answer with "call me and I will help you", which a tool should never say. I added a rule to the prompt telling it never to ask the person to contact it, and to point them to their bank's official number or 1930 instead. The final demo shows the fixed answer.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

My mom's questions and screenshots can include chats and payment screens. With an open-weight model running locally, that content goes only to the Ollama server on my own laptop, not to a cloud AI service. After the one-time model download, it needs no paid API. The model, language, and prompt can be changed by anyone, which matters in a country with many languages. I wouldn't be comfortable pointing a closed cloud API at my mom's payment screens.

Limitations

Gemma 4B is small. Its Hindi is decent but not perfect, and it can give imperfect advice, so it's a helper, not a guarantee.

The first answer can take a minute or two on my laptop, which has no GPU.

Right now it runs only on my own computer. Other people can run it using the steps in the README.

It doesn't know the current screens of any app, so it explains in general terms.

What's next: a bigger local model for better Hindi, and a way to run it on a shared home or community computer so more families can use it from their phones.

DEV Community

Phone Guide: Explaining Apps and Spotting Scams for My Mom