DEV Community: Rohan Sonu Bablani

TouchTree: I Built a Website That Tells You to Close It

Rohan Sonu Bablani — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 18:12:56 +0000

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

What I Built

What if a website's entire purpose was to convince you to stop using websites?

We spend so much time building technology to keep people engaged, scrolling, clicking, and coming back. I wanted to make something that did the opposite.

Meet TouchTree — a tiny, interactive website that reminds you to step away from your screen and experience the world outside.

It doesn't have a productivity dashboard, daily streaks, achievements, or notifications. It simply encourages you to feel the grass beneath your feet, touch the bark of a tree, smell a flower, listen to the wind, and be present for a moment.

The experience has three simple stages:

A reminder that the real world is waiting outside.
A gentle nudge: Go touch a tree.
A final screen telling you to leave the screen behind.

No progress to track. Nothing to share. Nothing else to click.

The best outcome is that you close the website.

Demo

🌱 Live website:

golixco.github.io

Code

💻 GitHub repository:

Golixco / TouchTree

TouchTree

A tiny, quiet reminder to step away from the screen and return to nature.

The Philosophy

We live in a world where hours are spent staring at screens, consuming digital streams, and conversing with artificial intelligence. Sometimes, the most helpful thing technology can do is remind us to stop using it.

"Nothing on this screen is as real as the world waiting outside.
Go out. Touch the leaves. Feel the grass beneath your feet. Smell the flowers. Listen to the birds.
Our ancestors experienced the world directly. We don't need an app to teach us how to be human.
Close this screen. Go touch a tree."

TouchTree does not exist to keep your attention. It exists to give you a reason to leave.

Why the UI is Intentionally Minimal

TouchTree rejects the conventions of modern engagement software:

No artificial reward loops: No streaks to maintain, no badges to…

View on GitHub

Feel free to explore the source and see how the experience is built.

How I Built It

I built TouchTree using plain HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript.

I deliberately kept the implementation lightweight:

No frontend framework.
No backend or external API.
No accounts, analytics, or tracking.
A responsive interface with keyboard accessibility and reduced-motion support.

The visual design uses botanical colours, soft shapes, and a calm layout to make the experience feel closer to nature than a conventional productivity tool.

And here's the unusual part: I didn't use AI in the project itself.

That was intentional. I didn't want to build another system that claims to get people closer to the real world while demanding more of their attention.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

I want to be transparent: TouchTree does not use an open-weight model or an open-source AI framework, so I cannot claim that open AI powered this project. That means it does not meet the challenge's central technical requirement.

But the idea behind TouchTree comes from a question I think is worth asking:

Does every human problem need another piece of technology?

Open innovation gives people the freedom to experiment, understand how tools work, and build things for themselves. At the same time, building responsibly sometimes means recognising when a problem doesn't need a complicated technical solution.

TouchTree is my small, deliberately simple response to the theme. It isn't a demonstration of open-source AI; it's a reminder that technology should serve people, not become the centre of their lives.

Sometimes, the most useful thing a digital experience can do is help someone walk away from it.

My Agent Session

I used an AI coding agent to help build the project.

DevRelay session:
https://dev.to/agent_sessions/touchtree-building-a-tiny-botanical-nature-reminder-experience-qdwkkv

Prize Categories

None claimed. TouchTree does not use any partner technology, and I am not claiming eligibility for an AI or partner category.

Built solo by Golixco. 🌿

Go touch a tree.

Nudge10, An anti-doomscrolling focus companion built for a friend who struggles to stay productive for even 10 minutes.

Rohan Sonu Bablani — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 19:30:19 +0000

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge: Build for a Friend

What I Built

My friend has a problem that probably sounds familiar: he can spend a ridiculous amount of time doomscrolling, but when it comes to doing something productive, staying focused for even 10 minutes can be difficult.

So I built Nudge10 specifically for him.

Nudge10 turns a large or vague task into one small, concrete 10-minute mission.

Instead of:

"Finish my DBMS assignment."

it might give him:

Open Question 1 and complete the next small step.

Then the 10-minute session starts.

While the session is active, the Nudge10 Chrome extension can detect selected distraction sites such as YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, and X. When that happens, Nudge10 generates a short AI intervention designed to get the user back to the task without guilt or a motivational lecture.

The goal isn't to make someone suddenly become perfectly disciplined.

It's much simpler:

Make the next 10 minutes easier to start.

I also gave Nudge10 to the friend I built it for, and he liked the experience enough to see himself actually using it.

Demo

Live Demo:
https://nudge10-9tli.onrender.com

Video Demo:

Code

GitHub:

Golixco / nudge10

Nudge10

An AI-powered anti-doomscrolling focus companion built for a friend who struggles to stay productive for even 10 minutes.

Nudge10 turns large, vague tasks into tiny 10-minute focus missions, protects active focus sessions from selected distraction sites, and delivers personalized AI interventions backed by durable persistent memory.

Demo

Live Web Application: https://nudge10-9tli.onrender.com
GitHub Repository: https://github.com/Golixco/nudge10
YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/sl0vxohgzsM?si=fzaGLlbtBTCoQXcc

The live production application runs on Render, serving both the FastAPI REST API and the static web client.

Note on Chrome Extension: The Nudge10 browser companion is currently distributed as an unpacked Manifest V3 extension for personal and development use; it is not published on the Chrome Web Store.

What Nudge10 Does

Task Input: The user enters a task they are avoiding or overwhelmed by.
Mission Generation: Google Gemma 3 27B breaks the task down into one concrete, low-friction starting action scoped to a 10-minute sprint.
Session Launch: The user starts the…

View on GitHub

How I Built It

Nudge10 uses Google's Gemma 3 27B, an open-weight model, as the core AI model.

I use Backboard for assistant orchestration and persistent memory, and Render for the production deployment.

The basic architecture is:

User
  │
  ▼
Nudge10 Web App
  │
  ├── Task input
  ├── 10-minute focus sessions
  └── Session lifecycle
  │
  ▼
FastAPI Backend
  │
  ▼
Backboard Assistant
  │
  ├── Persistent memory
  └── Conversation/thread handling
  │
  ▼
Gemma 3 27B
  │
  ▼
Mission / Intervention

The Chrome extension connects the browser side of the experience to the active focus session.

When the user starts a session, the extension stores the active session locally. If the user navigates to a configured distraction domain, the extension sends only the normalized domain category and the session timing needed by the backend.

For example:

{
  "site": "youtube.com",
  "elapsed_seconds": 120
}

It does not send the full URL, search query, page contents, page title, cookies, passwords, or browsing history.

Persistent memory

One of the most useful parts of Nudge10 is its ability to remember how the user prefers to work.

For example:

the user prefers 10-minute focus missions
the user prefers concise, direct instructions
the user doesn't want motivational speeches

Those preferences can influence future sessions.

Nudge10 also distinguishes useful durable behavior from temporary context. A one-off assignment shouldn't automatically become a permanent memory.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

A closed API could absolutely be used to build something like Nudge10.

For me, the value of open innovation is flexibility.

Nudge10 uses an open-weight Gemma model instead of making the core AI experience permanently dependent on one closed model provider. That leaves room to experiment with different models and deployment approaches, and potentially move toward more private or local inference in the future.

That matters for a product dealing with personal productivity behavior.

The browser extension also follows a data-minimization approach. It reacts to a small set of explicitly configured distraction domains instead of collecting a user's general browsing history.

Open innovation didn't make the project possible in a way that a closed API could never have done. Instead, it gave me more control over what sits at the center of the product and more freedom to change that layer later.

My Agent Session

I built Nudge10 with Antigravity and used DevRelay to preserve the development process.

The saved session includes the architecture work, Gemma and Backboard integration, persistent memory implementation, focus-session system, Chrome extension, testing, and Render deployment.

Agent Session:
https://dev.to/agent_sessions/building-nudge10-anti-doomscrolling-focus-companion-with-google-gemma-backboard-zczmyn

Prize Categories

I'm entering Nudge10 in:

Best Use of Gemma
Best Use of Backboard
Best Use of Render

Nudge10 uses Gemma as its open-weight AI model, Backboard for assistant orchestration and persistent memory, and Render for the production deployment.

I built Nudge10 for one friend, but the problem is probably much bigger than one person.

Sometimes the hardest part of productivity isn't knowing what to do.

It's staying with it for the next ten minutes.