CalmSpace - Pause. Talk. Reset.

Shraddha Kolate — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 14:58:48 +0000

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

What I Built

I built CalmSpace, a small AI-powered reflection tool for a friend or anyone who needs a moment to pause before reacting.

Sometimes we feel angry, stressed, hurt, or overwhelmed and want to react immediately. CalmSpace gives a simple space to write what is bothering you. It listens to the situation, helps you pause, suggests one practical next step, and asks one question to understand what you need.

It also has a “Calm my message” feature that rewrites an emotional message into a calmer version while keeping the original complaint and main point.

I wanted to build something simple, private, and easy to use when emotions are running high.

Demo

https://youtu.be/xGp40oXi5jU

Code

https://github.com/shraddhakolate30-maker/CalmSpace

How I Built It

CalmSpace is built with Python and Streamlit. For the AI part, I used Gemma 3:1B, an open-weight model, running locally through Ollama.

The app has two simple features:

Talk to me — the user writes what is bothering them, and Gemma helps them understand the situation, pause before reacting, choose one practical next step, and think about what they need.
Calm my message — the user can paste an emotional message, and Gemma rewrites it in a calmer way while keeping the main complaint and request.

I chose local inference with Ollama so the AI runs on my own computer instead of depending on a paid cloud AI API.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

Open innovation made it possible for me to build CalmSpace using an open-weight AI model that I could run locally.

Using Gemma 3:1B with Ollama meant I could experiment with AI without depending on a paid cloud API. It also helped me understand how a local AI model can become part of a real application, rather than just being something I use through a website.

For a small student project like CalmSpace, this made AI development more accessible and gave me the freedom to experiment, learn, and build with technology that I can run and understand myself.

My Agent Session

Prize Categories

Best Use of Gemma — $200

CalmSpace uses Gemma 3:1B locally through Ollama as the core AI model.

Exploring Microsoft Fabric: From Data to Insights 🚀

Shraddha Kolate — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 14:38:01 +0000

👀 Quick question for students & tech enthusiasts:

If you had to manage a large amount of data, what would you want first?

🔹 A place to store everything
🔹 A way to clean & transform it
🔹 Tools to analyze it
🔹 Dashboards to visualize it

What if you could connect all of these in one platform? 🤔

I recently explored Microsoft Fabric through Microsoft Learn and discovered how it brings different stages of the data lifecycle together — from getting data to analyzing, visualizing, and governing it.

At the center of this is OneLake, a centralized data lake that connects different Fabric workloads. 🚀

📖 Want to explore how it works?

👉 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/fundamentals/data-lifecycle?wt.mc_id=studentamb_657273

💬 Which stage would you explore first — Store, Transform, Analyze, or Visualize?

MicrosoftFabric #MicrosoftLearn #DataAnalytics #CloudComputing

DEV Community: Shraddha Kolate