What I Built

Between October 31 (Halloween) and November 1–2 (Día de los Muertos), our calendars mark a poignant interval where the boundary between memory and presence feels porous. In Mexican tradition, this is not a time of fear or terror, but of tender remembrance. Families construct ofrendas (altars) adorned with fiery marigolds (cempasúchil), fragrant copal incense, pan de muerto, sugar skulls (calaveras), and portrait frames to welcome departed ancestors home for a feast of music, love, and laughter.

Ofrenda Digital translates this ancient heritage into a private, local-first interactive sanctuary and oral history weaver built around open-weight Google Gemma AI.

The candlelit 3-tier baroque altar featuring Doña Rosa and Don Mateo's memorial frames, traditional offerings, and procedural ambient strings.

Core Capabilities:

Interactive 3-Tier Baroque Altar (Los Tres Niveles):

Tier 1 (El Cielo / The Heavens): Spiritual purity, grand baroque golden arched frames with inner velvet borders, copal incense burner with rising animated smoke curls, vessel of pure water, and sacred salt.
Tier 2 (La Tierra / Earthly Remembrances): Loved ones' portrait gallery surrounded by their favorite earthly joys — freshly baked pan de muerto, clay pot coffee (café de olla), Spanish acoustic guitars, and secret family recipes.
Tier 3 (El Inframundo / Mictlán & Roots): Vividly iced sugar skulls (calaveras de azúcar), autumn fruit baskets, and the luminous Marigold Carpet (Tapete de Cempasúchil) guiding path nodes (Doorway → Courtyard → Threshold → Ofrenda).

Authentic Scalloped Papel Picado Ribbon & Atmospheric Physics:

Real-time clickable candles with flame flicker physics. Clicking a candle plays an authentic chime, increases the living flame counter ("Lit by the Family"), and dedicates light to an ancestor.
Built-in procedural Web Audio synthesizer that generates contemplative nylon-string guitar arpeggios and resonant altar bell chimes without requiring external audio downloads or latency.
Floating marigold petals drifting gently across the screen with natural ambient turbulence.

Open-Weight Gemma AI Remembrance Engine (Slide-Over Sanctuary Drawer):

Oral History Preserver: Speak into your microphone (via Web Speech API) or type raw stream-of-consciousness childhood memories. Gemma synthesizes conversational snippets into enduring, literary biographical prose capsules on aged parchment with wax seals.
Calaverita Literaria Studio: Gemma drafts traditional 4-stanza octosyllabic rhyming folk verses celebrating each person’s humor, favorite dishes, and endearing quirks in the classic style of José Guadalupe Posada.
Altar Remembrance Letters: Generates formal, deeply moving eulogy letters to be placed beside family photos and read aloud at the altar.
Ancestral Wisdom Dialogue (Ghost in the Machine): Ask an ancestor for life guidance or share what is on your heart. Gemma channels their voice, grounded in their personality, life values, and favorite sayings.

100% Offline & Private "Memory Capsules":

Zero telemetry, zero external tracking, zero cloud server dependencies.
Export and import full Memory Capsules (ofrenda-capsule.json) to keep on a private USB flash drive or pass down through generations.

Slide-Over Sanctuary Drawer & Calaverita Studio

The Slide-Over Sanctuary Drawer featuring the Calaverita Literaria Studio, Oral History Weaver, and Ancestral Dialogue.

Code

The complete source code is open-source under the MIT License:

sachinn-alt / ofrenda-digital

Ofrenda Digital: A candlelit Dia de los Muertos memorial & oral history sanctuary powered 100% offline by open-weight Gemma AI

🕯️ Ofrenda Digital — Private Memorial & Gemma AI Sanctuary

Hacktoberfest 2026 Open-Source AI Challenge (Week 4): Ghost in the Machine
A private, candlelit Día de los Muertos memorial & oral history preserver powered 100% locally by open-weight Google Gemma AI.

🏵️ Overview

Between Halloween night (October 31) and Día de los Muertos (November 1 & 2), the veil between memory and presence grows thin. In Mexican tradition, families build ofrendas (altars) adorned with marigolds (cempasúchil), copal incense, sugar skulls (calaveras), pan de muerto, and portrait frames to welcome departed ancestors home.

Ofrenda Digital translates this ancient practice into a private, local-first interactive sanctuary. Rather than sending sacred family memories, photographs, and spoken grief to corporate cloud APIs, Ofrenda Digital runs open-weight Google Gemma models entirely on your local machine. It works with the internet and lights turned off, preserving family oral histories, crafting authentic…

View on GitHub

System Architecture


mermaid
graph TD
    User([Family Member]) -->|Speech / Text / Photos| UI[React 19 + TypeScript Altar Canvas]
    UI -->|Procedural Chimes & Acoustic Strings| WebAudio[Web Audio API Engine]
    UI -->|Local Image Encoding| Storage[IndexedDB / LocalStorage & JSON Capsules]

    subgraph Local Open-Source AI Core
        UI -->|Prompt & Persona Config| GemmaRouter[Gemma Service Router]
        GemmaRouter -->|Local HTTP :11434| Ollama[Ollama Daemon: gemma2:2b / gemma2:9b]
        GemmaRouter -->|Fallback Mode| OfflineSanctuary[Offline Sanctuary Neural Engine]
    end

    GemmaRouter -->|Synthesized Prose & Calaveritas| UI

DEV Community

Ofrenda Digital: A Candlelit Día de los Muertos Sanctuary Powered 100% Offline by Open-Weight Gemma AI