TouchQuest 🌿: Turning Screen Time into Real-World Adventures with Open-Source AI

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

🌿 What I Built

TouchQuest is an AI-powered outdoor adventure companion designed to help people spend less time scrolling and more time exploring the world around them.

We spend hours on our phones, switching between apps and feeds, often forgetting that some of the best experiences happen away from a screen.

I built TouchQuest around a simple idea: What if AI could encourage us to put our phones down instead of keeping us glued to them?

TouchQuest turns going outside into a series of small, achievable adventures. It helps users discover activities, step away from their screens, and build a more intentional connection with the world around them.

The goal is simple: use technology to help people experience more of life beyond technology.

🚀 Demo

🌐 Live website: https://touchquest.onrender.com/

Explore the website and try TouchQuest for yourself!

💻 Code

GitHub repository: https://github.com/Harry1402/TouchQuest.git

The project is built with open-source technologies, with an emphasis on making AI useful for a real-world problem rather than just another screen-based experience.

🛠️ How I Built It

TouchQuest combines a modern web stack with AI-powered activity generation.

The project uses Next.js and TypeScript for the application, with an AI integration layer designed to generate personalized outdoor quests. The AI layer uses an open-weight language model, Gemma 2, through a configurable inference setup.

The application also includes a dedicated quest-generation API, input validation, and a sample mode for trying the experience without relying on a live model response.

I wanted the architecture to remain flexible, so the AI integration can be adapted to compatible inference providers and local development environments.

One of the main design decisions was to make the AI serve a clear purpose: generating ideas that encourage people to get outside and take action.

🌍 Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

AI is often used to increase engagement, automate work, or help people create more digital content. I wanted to explore a different direction.

With open-weight models and open-source development tools, developers can experiment, adapt their applications, and learn from implementations without depending entirely on a single proprietary AI ecosystem.

For TouchQuest, open innovation makes it possible to explore a human-centered use case: technology that encourages people to disconnect from their screens and reconnect with their surroundings.

It also gives other developers an opportunity to inspect the code, suggest improvements, experiment with the AI integration, and build on the idea.

I believe technology should not always demand more of our attention. Sometimes, its best use is to help us give our attention back to the world.

🤖 My Agent Session

I'll add my development agent session here if available.

🏆 Prize Categories

• Best Open-Source AI Project (DigitalOcean)

TouchQuest explores how open-source AI can support healthier digital habits and inspire people to spend more time outdoors.

Thanks to the DEV Community and Hacktoberfest for creating opportunities to build projects that combine open innovation with meaningful real-world impact! 🌱