Ruko — Stop. Check Before You Tap. रुको.

vedant satbhai — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 06:40:25 +0000

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

What I Built

Ruko — Stop. Check before you tap. रुको.

I built Ruko as a privacy-first second opinion for people who receive suspicious messages and aren't sure what to do next.

The idea came from a simple problem: scam messages don't always look like scams. A message can look like it's from a bank, a courier company, a job recruiter, or a buyer on a marketplace. When someone is unsure, the easiest thing to do is tap the link, reply, pay, or share information.

Ruko is designed to create one small pause before that happens.

You paste a suspicious message into Ruko and it:

checks the message using deterministic safety rules
identifies suspicious signals such as urgency, payment requests, impersonation, and suspicious links
shows exactly what was detected
uses Google's open-weight Gemma model locally for context and explanation
gives a simple, actionable next step
refuses to send sensitive authentication messages to the AI layer

The most important part is what Ruko doesn't do.

If a message looks like it contains an OTP, PIN, password, CVV, or authentication code, Ruko's Privacy Gate stops processing before Gemma is called.

Instead, Ruko clearly says:

RUKO STOPPED HERE

This makes the privacy boundary visible instead of hiding it.

The goal is simple:

Stop. Check before you tap.

Built for a friend. Useful for everyone.

Demo

🎥 Video demo: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1m_k6TyTNtXnEJKM_K30DE8bilaaJysTP?usp=sharing

The demo shows three situations:

A bank/KYC scam message being analyzed and flagged as HIGH RISK
The X-Ray view showing the signals Ruko detected
A private OTP message being blocked by the Privacy Gate before it reaches Gemma

Code

GitHub: https://github.com/vedant21-ctr/rukoAI

The repository contains the complete project, including:

Next.js frontend
FastAPI backend
Privacy Gate
Safe representation layer
deterministic rule engine
local Gemma integration
Safety Validator
evaluation benchmarks
automated tests
architecture and privacy documentation

How I Built It

Ruko is built around Gemma, Google's open-weight model, running locally through Ollama.

The architecture deliberately separates safety decisions from AI-generated explanations:

Message → Privacy Gate → Safe Representation → Rule Engine → Gemma → Safety Validator → Ruko warning

The Privacy Gate runs first.

Instead of sending the original message directly to the model, Ruko converts safe messages into a structured representation containing signals such as:


json
{
  "intent": "account_warning",
  "urgency": "high",
  "requested_action": "verify_identity",
  "payment_requested": false,
  "credential_requested": false,
  "url_type": "shortened",
  "threat_present": true,
  "sender_type": "unknown"
}

Building Ruko for a Friend

vedant satbhai — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 03:27:50 +0000

I'm participating in the Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge: Build for a Friend.

For this challenge, I'm building Ruko — “Stop. Check before you tap.”

Ruko is a privacy-first scam warning assistant designed for someone close to me who may receive suspicious SMS or WhatsApp messages.

The idea is simple:

Before you tap a link, share information, or make a payment — stop and check.

I'm building it with open-source AI (Gemma) running locally, with a privacy layer that prevents sensitive information such as OTPs, PINs, passwords, and CVVs from being sent to the AI model.

I'm excited to build something practical for a real person while exploring how open-source AI can be used for privacy-focused applications.

Let's build. 🚀

DEV Community: vedant satbhai

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