DEV Community: Aditya Narayan Shukla

🌍 EarthQuest AI — Open-Source AI That Gets You Off the Screen and Into the Real World

Aditya Narayan Shukla — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:58:26 +0000

🌍 EarthQuest AI — Open-Source AI That Gets You Off the Screen and Into the Real World

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

What I Built

EarthQuest AI is a local-first AI-powered outdoor adventure companion designed to turn screen time into real-world exploration.

The idea is simple:

Use AI for a few seconds. Then put the phone away and go outside.

EarthQuest AI asks users about their available time, preferred activity, and optionally their location. It then generates a personalized outdoor quest using AI.

Instead of endlessly scrolling through apps, users receive a simple mission they can complete in the real world.

For example:

🌳 Explore a nearby green space and discover something you've never noticed.
🚶 Take a short walking adventure and document interesting things you find.
🌿 Observe plants, trees, or wildlife around you.
📸 Complete a photography challenge.
🧭 Create your own mini exploration challenge.

After completing the quest, users can return to EarthQuest AI, record their experience, and track their outdoor activity.

Who is it for?

EarthQuest AI is designed for:

Students who spend too much time on screens
Developers and tech enthusiasts
People who want simple outdoor activities
Anyone looking for a reason to go outside
People who want to use AI without constantly being online

The main philosophy behind the project is:

The better you use EarthQuest AI, the less time you spend using EarthQuest AI.

Demo

🌐 Live Website:
https://aditya-narain-shukla.github.io/EARTHQUEST-AI/

The website allows users to create an outdoor quest, generate an AI-powered activity, start the quest, complete it, and reflect on their experience.

Code

💻 GitHub Repository:
https://github.com/aditya-narain-shukla/EARTHQUEST-AI

The project is built using simple web technologies so that it remains lightweight, understandable, and easy to run.

How I Built It

EarthQuest AI is built using:

HTML — structure and interface
CSS — responsive design, animations, cards, and visual styling
JavaScript — application logic, quest management, timers, statistics, local storage, and AI communication
Ollama — local AI inference
Llama 3.2 — the open-weight AI model used to generate personalized outdoor quests

The browser communicates with Ollama running locally on the user's computer.

The AI receives information such as:

Available time
Preferred activity
Optional location/context
The goal of getting the user outdoors

It then generates a personalized outdoor quest.

I also included a fallback quest-generation system so the application can still provide useful experiences when the local AI model is unavailable.

The project intentionally avoids frameworks and unnecessary dependencies. The core application can be understood through three simple files:

index.html
style.css
script.js

This makes the project easy for beginners to understand, modify, and contribute to.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

Open innovation is especially important for a project like EarthQuest AI because the goal is not to create another service that constantly sends user data to a remote server.

With local AI through Ollama, the AI inference can happen directly on the user's own machine.

This provides several important advantages.

🔒 Privacy

Users can keep their activity preferences and optional location information on their own computer instead of automatically sending everything to a third-party AI service.

💰 Lower Running Cost

There is no per-request cloud AI API cost for generating quests when inference is performed locally.

🧠 Model Freedom

Because the project uses Ollama, users can experiment with different compatible open-weight models instead of being locked into a single proprietary AI provider.

🛠️ Customization

Developers can change the prompts, behavior, interface, and AI workflow according to their needs.

🌐 Less Dependence on the Cloud

Local inference makes it possible to build AI experiences that don't require every interaction to pass through a centralized cloud service.

Most importantly, open AI fits the philosophy of EarthQuest AI:

Technology should help people experience the real world, not keep them trapped inside a screen.

Instead of building another AI chatbot that encourages users to spend more time talking to AI, EarthQuest AI uses AI as a short bridge between the digital world and the physical world.

My Agent Session

The main EarthQuest AI experience is focused on the user's interaction with the local AI model.

Agent Session: Not included in this submission.

Prize Categories

🏆 Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge — Touch Grass

EarthQuest AI is specifically built around the Touch Grass theme.

The project uses open-weight AI to encourage people to:

Plan → Go Outside → Explore → Experience → Return → Reflect

The screen is intentionally designed to be only a small part of the experience.

What Makes EarthQuest AI Different?

Most AI applications try to increase engagement:

More messages → More screen time → More AI usage

EarthQuest AI tries to reverse that:

Short AI interaction → Real-world quest → Screen away → Outdoor experience

That is the core idea behind the project.

🌍 AI should not always keep us online.

Sometimes, the best AI experience is the one that tells you to close the laptop, put down your phone, and go outside.

Future Ideas

Some features I would like to add in future versions include:

🐦 Offline bird identification
🌱 Plant and tree identification
🗺️ Smarter outdoor route generation
🏃 Personalized running and walking challenges
🌦️ Weather-aware quests
📍 More advanced local exploration
🎮 Achievement and reward systems
👥 Community-generated quests
🤖 Support for additional local AI models
📱 Progressive Web App support
🔌 More complete offline functionality

Final Thought

EarthQuest AI started with a simple question:

What if we used AI to help people spend less time with technology instead of more?

The result is a small experiment in using open

WILDQUEST AI — Turn Screen Time Into Wild Time

Aditya Narayan Shukla — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 05:48:32 +0000

🌿 WILDQUEST AI — Turn Screen Time Into Wild Time

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

What I Built

WILDQUEST AI is an AI-powered outdoor exploration companion designed to help people spend less time on their screens and more time in the real world.

The idea is simple:

AI gives you a reason to put your phone down. 🌿

Instead of using AI to keep users engaged with another screen, WILDQUEST AI uses AI to generate personalized outdoor quests and activities.

For example, a user can ask:

"Give me a fun 20-minute outdoor activity."

WILDQUEST AI can turn that into a challenge such as:

🌳 20-Minute Nature Hunt
Find three different types of leaves, identify two different sounds, and discover one unusual natural object during your walk.

The user receives the mission, starts the quest, and then puts the phone away and goes outside.

Who is it for?

WILDQUEST AI is designed for:

🎓 Students who need healthy breaks from studying
📱 People trying to reduce unnecessary screen time
🥾 Beginners who want simple outdoor activities
🌳 Nature lovers
👨‍👩‍👧 Families looking for outdoor activities
🏃 People who want to become more active
🌎 Anyone who wants to explore their surroundings

Core Features

🌿 AI-generated outdoor quests
🎯 Daily WildQuest challenges
🤖 AI Field Guide
🥾 Walking and exploration activities
🐦 Nature observation challenges
🏆 XP and achievement system
🔥 Outdoor streak tracking
📊 Outdoor progress tracking
🔒 Privacy-focused design
💻 Local AI architecture
📱 Responsive mobile-friendly interface

The goal is not to make people spend more time inside the application.

The goal is to make them close the application and go outside.

Demo

🌿 Live Website:
https://aditya-narain-shukla.github.io/WILDQUEST-AI/

The live demo allows users to explore the WILDQUEST AI interface, generate outdoor challenges, interact with the field-guide experience, and track their outdoor progress.

Code

💻 GitHub Repository:
https://github.com/aditya-narain-shukla/WILDQUEST-AI

The project is built using:

HTML5
CSS3
Vanilla JavaScript

There is no heavy frontend framework required.

The project is intentionally simple and accessible so that other developers can understand it, modify it, and contribute to it.

How I Built It

WILDQUEST AI was built as a lightweight web application using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

The frontend contains the complete user experience:

HTML
 ↓
User Interface
 ↓
JavaScript
 ↓
Quest / Progress / AI Logic

🌐 Frontend

HTML provides the structure of the application.

CSS provides the visual design, including:

Nature-inspired interface
Responsive layout
Cards
Animations
Buttons
Progress indicators
Mobile-friendly design

JavaScript handles:

Quest generation
Quest completion
XP and progress
Streaks
User interactions
Local storage
AI communication

🤖 Open-Source AI

The AI architecture is designed around local/open-weight AI inference rather than requiring a proprietary AI API.

The intended architecture is:

             WILDQUEST AI
                   │
                   ▼
             JavaScript
                   │
                   ▼
          Local AI Endpoint
                   │
                   ▼
                Ollama
                   │
                   ▼
        Open-Weight AI Model
                   │
                   ▼
           AI Outdoor Quest

Ollama provides a way to run compatible AI models locally on a user's computer.

This means the AI layer can be adapted to different open-weight models instead of permanently depending on a single proprietary provider.

🧠 AI's Role

The AI is designed to act as an outdoor field guide.

Instead of simply answering questions, it is instructed to provide practical activities that encourage real-world exploration.

For example:

User:
"Give me something interesting to do outside."

        ↓

WILDQUEST AI

"Try a 15-minute sound hunt.
Walk somewhere quiet and identify
five different sounds around you."

        ↓

User puts the phone away.

        ↓

🌳 Real-world exploration

This makes AI a bridge between the digital and physical worlds.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

Open innovation is especially important for WILDQUEST AI because the project's purpose is to create an AI experience that is accessible, customizable, privacy-friendly, and not completely dependent on proprietary cloud services.

With a closed AI API, the application would depend heavily on:

A specific provider
API availability
API pricing
Usage limits
External infrastructure
Sending requests to a third-party service

Open-source and open-weight AI provide another possibility:

Your Computer
     ↓
Local AI Runtime
     ↓
Open-Weight Model
     ↓
WILDQUEST AI

This can allow developers to experiment with different models and customize the AI experience.

🔒 Privacy

Local inference can help keep interactions on the user's own machine rather than automatically sending every AI request to a third-party cloud service.

💰 Accessibility

Developers can experiment without necessarily needing a paid proprietary AI API.

🔧 Customization

Developers can change the model, prompts, behavior, and AI experience.

DEV Community: Aditya Narayan Shukla

🌍 EarthQuest AI — Open-Source AI That Gets You Off the Screen and Into the Real World

🌍 EarthQuest AI — Open-Source AI That Gets You Off the Screen and Into the Real World

What I Built

Who is it for?

Demo

Code

How I Built It

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

🔒 Privacy

💰 Lower Running Cost

🧠 Model Freedom

🛠️ Customization

🌐 Less Dependence on the Cloud

My Agent Session

Prize Categories

🏆 Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge — Touch Grass

What Makes EarthQuest AI Different?

🌍 AI should not always keep us online.

Future Ideas

Final Thought

WILDQUEST AI — Turn Screen Time Into Wild Time

🌿 WILDQUEST AI — Turn Screen Time Into Wild Time

What I Built

Who is it for?

Core Features

Demo

Code

How I Built It

🌐 Frontend

🤖 Open-Source AI

🧠 AI's Role

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

🔒 Privacy

💰 Accessibility

🔧 Customization

🌍 Co