Stay away from phone

Hey everyone,

For the Hacktoberfest 2026 challenge, I decided to build something a little different.

We use our phones for almost everything, and even AI usually gives us another reason to stay in front of a screen. So I thought, what if I build an AI that actually tells you to put your phone down and go outside?
That's how I came up with TouchGrass AI.

What does it do?
You simply tell the app:

• How much time you have
• What you want to do – walking, gardening, birding or running
• How much energy you have Then Gemma creates an outdoor mission for you. For example: 30 minutes + Walking + Low energy can turn into a simple outdoor activity where you walk, notice things around you, take a break from your phone and spend some time outside.

How I built it
I built the frontend using React and Vite.
For the backend, I used Python and FastAPI.
For the AI part, I'm running Gemma 3:4b locally using Ollama.
The flow is basically:
React
↓
FastAPI
↓
Ollama
↓
Gemma
↓
Outdoor Mission

One thing I really liked about this project is that the AI is running locally instead of depending on a cloud AI API.

Why TouchGrass?
We built AI to make our digital lives easier, but sometimes we just need to close the laptop, put the phone down and go outside.
So I wanted to experiment with using AI for exactly that.
The goal isn't to keep you inside the app.
The goal is to get you out of it.

Here is the link of my repository;
https://github.com/Vanshika-Parmar/TouchGrass-AI.git

What's next?
This is my first working version, but I want to improve it further with better missions, rewards and a more polished experience.
I'd also like to actually take one of the missions outside and see how it feels in real life.

Thanks for checking out my project.
Tags: #devchallenges #hf26challenge #ai #opensource