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Neri Esparza
Neri Esparza

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🐾 Green Paws: an Earth Day AI assistant helping dog owners go green one walk at a time

DEV Weekend Challenge: Earth Day

This is a submission for Weekend Challenge: Earth Day Edition

What I Built

Green Paws is an Earth Day AI chatbot that helps dog owners find eco-friendly alternatives to plastic poop bags. Every day, millions of plastic dog-waste bags end up in landfills, where they can take up to 1000 years to break down. We built Green Paws to help dog owners make smarter, more sustainable choices. Small swaps, big impact. 🐾 🌍
The app lets you chat with an AI assistant that knows everything about compostable bags, dog waste composters, biodigesters, and other greener alternatives to single-use plastic.

Demo

🌿 green-paws-iota.vercel.app

Note: the app uses the Gemini API free tier which has rate limits. If you see an error, please try again in a few minutes or refresh the page!

Code

https://github.com/nerisina/green-paws

How I Built It

I started with a simple idea: what if dog owners had a quick way to ask questions about sustainable alternatives to plastic poop bags? I built Green Paws in a weekend using React and Vite, with custom CSS for a clean editorial look with a playful touch.

The heart of the app is Google Gemini. I used the @google/genai SDK to connect to gemini-2.0-flash and wrote a custom system prompt that keeps the assistant focused on eco-friendly dog care topics, making sure answers stay short, friendly, and fun. No generic AI vibes here!

The trickiest part was the UX — I wanted people to feel invited to chat even if they didn't know what to ask. That's why I added clickable example questions so anyone can jump right in.
The app is deployed on Vercel with the Gemini API key safely stored as an environment variable.

Stack:

React 19 + Vite
Google Gemini API (gemini-2.0-flash)
@google/genai SDK
Deployed on Vercel

Prize Categories

Best Use of Google Gemini — the entire conversational experience is powered by Gemini 2.0 Flash with a custom system prompt that keeps the assistant focused, fun, and on topic.

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