🌱 GO. — An AI That Wants You to Stop Using It | Touch Grass Challenge

Shikhar Ahirwar — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 05:41:46 +0000

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

I Built an AI That Wants You to Put Your Phone Away 🌱

What I Built

GO. — AI for Leaving the Screen is a small web app built around a simple idea:

Ask AI. Then leave.

Most AI tools are designed to keep us on screens longer. GO. tries to do the opposite.

The user chooses a vibe, duration, company, and place, and GO. generates a small offline mission designed to get them away from their device and into the real world.

Examples include:

Take a short walk and notice five things you normally ignore.
Explore a nearby area you've never paid attention to.
Do a small creative activity without using your phone.
Talk to someone you haven't spoken to recently.
Spend 20 minutes outside without checking your screen.

After generating a mission, GO. starts a short countdown and tells the user to put the phone away.

The app is designed for students, people who spend too much time online, and anyone who wants a simple reason to step outside, move, notice their surroundings, or connect with other people.

The goal isn't to replace real life with AI.

The goal is to use AI for a few seconds so you can leave it behind.

Demo

🌱 Live Demo:
https://shikharahirwar489-ui.github.io/-GO.-AI-for-Leaving-the-Screen/

Code

💻 GitHub Repository:
https://github.com/shikharahirwar489-ui/-GO.-AI-for-Leaving-the-Screen.git

The project is built with a simple frontend so that it is easy for other developers to understand, modify, and contribute to.

How I Built It

GO. is built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on the frontend.

The project is designed around local/open AI rather than depending on a proprietary AI API.

The planned architecture is:

Browser → Local Backend → Ollama → Open-Weight Model → Offline Mission

The AI receives structured information such as:

selected activity/vibe
available time
whether the user is alone or with others
preferred location
optional constraints

It then generates a short, practical mission that encourages the user to stop using their device.

The frontend also includes:

responsive UI
mission generation
multiple activity categories
countdown before leaving the screen
mission completion
local mission history
localStorage
safety guidance
no account requirement

The important design decision is that AI is only the starting point. The experience intentionally ends by encouraging the user to stop interacting with the application.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

Open innovation makes an idea like GO. much more interesting because the AI doesn't have to live inside a closed ecosystem.

With open-weight models and local inference, the mission-generation system can potentially run directly on the user's own computer.

That means developers can:

inspect how the AI is being used
experiment with different models
modify the prompts
run inference locally
build new mission-generation strategies
contribute improvements without depending entirely on a proprietary API

It also fits the philosophy of the project.

The AI should be a tool, not another platform trying to capture the user's attention.

Open AI ecosystems make it possible to experiment with that idea while keeping the project transparent and hackable.

My Agent Session

I used AI-assisted development while building GO. to help design the application structure, frontend logic, UI, mission-generation system, and project documentation.

I have not included a DevRelay agent session link because I don't want to claim a session that isn't actually available.

Prize Categories

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

This project is primarily entering the Touch Grass challenge category.

The project focuses directly on the challenge's idea of using open-source/open-weight AI to encourage people to spend less time on screens and more time in the physical world.

Final Thought

We keep asking:

"What can AI help us do online?"

GO. asks a different question:

"What can AI help us do offline?"

Ask AI.

Get your mission.

Put the phone away.

🌱

DEV Community: Shikhar Ahirwar