*
What I Built?
Ofrenda is a small app that helps write a remembrance for a loved one
for Día de los Muertos. You enter their name, their favorite foods,
a song they loved, and one memory. Gemma then writes a short, warm
message to place on a virtual ofrenda.
I chose this because nothing haunts us more than a loved one's memory. Ghost in the Machine felt like a
chance to build something gentle instead of scary.
Demo
https://dev.to/challenges/hacktoberfest-week4-2026-10-26)*
Code
https://github.com/ketone834-sourcs/ofrenda-gemma]
How I Built It
- Model: Gemma 3 (4B), an open-weight model from Google
- Runtime: Ollama, serving the model through a local API
- Interface: Gradio, for a simple form-and-result page
- Environment: a Google Colab notebook with a free T4 GPU
- A system prompt tells the model to use only the details given and never to invent facts, names or dates. That matters because a made-up detail about someone's loved one would be hurtful. I built this entirely on an Android phone, using only a browser.
Why Does Open Innovation Matter?
These stories are personal. With an open-weight model, a family's memories don't have to be sent to a company's servers or locked in a service that might disappear someday.
To be transparent: I used Colab for my demo, since my phone doesn't have enough memory to run the model. But because Gemma is open and Ollama is open source, the same code runs fully offline on any computer. A closed API would not allow
The Spirit of It
I tested Ofrenda with a made-up grandmother, Sebati, who loved Rasmalai and hummed "Jalebi baby" while shelling peas on the porch. I typed in a handful of small details, and Gemma gave them back
as something that read like a tender note.I expected a machine to feel like the ghost in this challenge: something cold and haunting. Instead, it felt closer to a candle on an ofrenda, a small light that helps you remember. The people we miss live in details like foods, songs and Sunday habits, and that is exactly.whatthis app asks for.
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