Smart Expense Tracker: A Private, Local AI Finance Assistant for My Friend.

#devchallenge #weekendchallenge #hf26challenge

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

What I Built

I built Smart Expense Tracker, a finance assistant for my friend "Denim Sharma". Instead of filling in forms, you simply type something like "tea 20, bus 100, lunch 120". A local AI model works out the items, amounts and categories, then the app shows spending analytics and gives personalised saving tips.

Who It's For

Denim Sharma is my friend. they were Live at Home Alone. who spends on many small things during the month and rarely knows where the money went. I wanted something effortless to use that does not require handing financial data to a third party.

Demo

How It Works

Interface: Streamlit, with custom styling
AI: Gemma 3 (4B), an open-weight model, running locally through Ollama
Storage: a simple CSV file on the user's own machine
The model converts free text into structured JSON expenses, and later writes a summary with saving tips from the category totals.

Why Open Source AI Matters Here

Privacy: financial data never leaves the laptop. There is no server and no account.
Zero cost: no API fees, which matters for a student.
Works offline: it runs on an ordinary 16 GB laptop with no dedicated GPU.
Flexible: switching to a different model takes a one-line change.

What My Friend Said

Denim Sharma is my best friend. She lives away from home, and like most students she spends on many small things during the month but rarely knows where the money went. I wanted something effortless to use that does not require handing financial data to a third party.

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