OutsideQuest 🌿: Turning Screen Time into Small Outdoor Adventures | #devchallenge

Shreyashi Kaitke — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 14:02:45 +0000

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

What I Built

OutsideQuest 🌿 is an outdoor adventure buddy that helps people spend less time scrolling and more time exploring the world around them.

Users choose how much time they have and what interests them, and OutsideQuest provides a practical outdoor mission with clear steps, an estimated duration, and safety guidance.

For example, a 30-minute break could become a gentle walk along a familiar path, noticing three details in nature.

It's designed for people who want to get outside without needing elaborate plans, expensive equipment, or an entire free day.

Demo

🌿 Live demo: https://outsidequest.onrender.com/

The public demo is available directly in your browser, with no API keys or local setup required.

Code

💻 GitHub repository: https://github.com/shrey04kaitke-sys/OutsideQuest

The project is built with Python and Streamlit, with a local AI-powered mission-generation workflow and fallback missions.

How I Built It

I built OutsideQuest using:

Python for application logic.
Streamlit for the interactive web interface.
Ollama + Qwen2.5 3B for local, open-weight AI mission generation.
Safety validation and fallback missions to make the experience more practical and reliable.
Render for public deployment.

The local version uses Ollama and Qwen2.5 3B to generate missions. The deployed public demo uses built-in missions, so visitors can try the application without needing to run a local model or configure API keys.

I also designed the public demo to disable personal progress and reflection storage, keeping those features available for local use instead.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

Open innovation gave me the flexibility to build an AI experience around my own requirements rather than relying entirely on a closed, hosted API.

Using an open-weight model with local inference lets users experiment with mission generation on their own machines, with greater control over the model and processing environment.

It also makes the project easier to customize, extend, and learn from. I can experiment with prompts, improve safety validation, and explore different models without making a proprietary API the foundation of the entire experience.

For me, open source is about more than making code publicly available. It's about giving other developers the freedom to understand, adapt, and build upon an idea.

Prize Categories

Best Use of Render — OutsideQuest is deployed on Render, making the public demo accessible through a browser without requiring users to install the application.