🌱 Touch Grass — Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge

Sambhav Bohra — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:56:21 +0000

What I Built

I built Touch Grass, a web application designed to encourage people to step away from their screens and spend more time in the real world.

The idea is simple: instead of spending all our free time scrolling, gaming, or sitting in front of a screen, the app encourages users to take small, meaningful breaks and actually touch grass 🌱.

The project is aimed at students, developers, remote workers, and anyone who spends a lot of time online.

The goal isn't to completely eliminate screen time. It's to create a healthier balance between the digital world and real-world activities.🌱 Touch Grass — Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge

Demo

🚀 Live Demo:

You can try the project directly through the deployed application and experience the idea behind the challenge.

Code

The project is open source and available on GitHub:

GitHub Repository: [ADD YOUR GITHUB REPOSITORY LINK HERE]

I built the project with the goal of keeping it simple, accessible, and easy for other developers to contribute to and improve.

How I Built It

Touch Grass is a web-based application built around the idea of using technology to encourage people to spend less time using technology.

The project uses modern web development tools to create an interactive experience where users can discover and take part in activities away from their screens.

For the AI component, I explored open-source AI tools/models as part of the development process rather than relying entirely on a closed AI API.

The overall workflow is:

User → Web App → AI-powered experience → Real-world activity → Less screen time 🌱

The most important part of the project is that AI isn't the final destination. It acts as a tool to help the user move from the digital environment into a real-world activity.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

Open innovation matters because developers should be able to experiment, learn, modify, and build on technology without being locked into a single closed platform.

Using open-source AI makes it possible to understand more about how the technology works, experiment with different models and tools, and adapt the experience to the needs of the project.

For a project like Touch Grass, this is especially important because the goal is not simply to build another AI application that keeps people online.

Instead, open technology helped me explore how AI can be used in a way that ultimately encourages people to close the laptop, leave the room, and interact with the real world.

That's the idea behind Touch Grass. 🌱

My Agent Session

I used an AI-assisted development workflow while building this project.

Agent Session: [ADD YOUR DEVRELAY AGENT SESSION LINK HERE]

This session shows how AI-assisted development contributed to the project.

Prize Categories

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge — Week 1: Touch Grass

Open Innovation / Open-Source AI

Final Thoughts

Building Touch Grass was a fun experiment in thinking about what AI applications should actually accomplish.

AI is becoming increasingly good at keeping us engaged with screens. I wanted to explore the opposite idea:

What if we use technology to help people spend more time away from technology?

Sometimes the best interaction with an app is knowing when to close it.

🌱 Touch Grass.

DEV Community: Sambhav Bohra

🌱 Touch Grass — Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge