This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady
What I Built
When your brain is completely fried by three emails from your boss, a looming Thursday deadline, and 30 open browser tabs, the last thing you need is another productivity tool asking you to organize a Kanban board, assign priority tags, or create a 10-step action plan. Most tools demand the exact executive function you currently lack.
Still is the antidote. It is an open-source, ephemeral decision decompressor designed for moments of acute cognitive fatigue and analysis paralysis.
You type or speak a raw, messy brain-dump into the box (e.g. "deadline thursday, boss emailed 3x, exhausted"). Still passes it through open-weight AI with strict deterministic guardrails to return exactly one small, physical, reversible micro-step that takes 10 minutes or less—and then completely forgets everything.
Who gets to be lazier because of it?
Anyone trapped in burnout, ADHD decision paralysis, or end-of-day overwhelm. You don't have to plan. You don't have to prioritize. You don't have to triage a backlog. You get one tiny 2-minute icebreaker (like "glance at that last email from your boss to see if it is actually scary or just noise", or "drink a cool glass of water"). You do that one thing, your paralysis dissolves, and you're back in motion without expending willpower.
Demo
- 🌐 Live Web Application: https://decision-decompressor.onrender.com
- 💻 Source Code Repository: github.com/vinit-tech-source/decision-decompressor
Code
vinit-tech-source
/
decision-decompressor
Still: The Decision Decompressor for Overwhelmed Minds
Still
One gentle thing, then it forgets you.
A calm decision decompressor built for days when planning feels impossible.
Still takes a raw, messy brain-dump and returns exactly one small, physical, reversible action that takes 10 minutes or less.
Live Demo • Features • Architecture • Getting Started • Deployment • Privacy
🍃 Why Still Exists
Most productivity apps demand more executive function than an overwhelmed mind can provide:
- Complex Kanban boards and task lists demand categorization and prioritization.
- Streak counters and notifications create guilt loops when you fall behind.
- AI assistants overload you with 10-step action plans when you can barely start one thing.
Still is the antidote. It is not a to-do list, a project manager, or a streak tracker. It is an ephemeral refuge that clears the noise, suggests one single micro-step, and forgets everything the moment you close the tab.
🚫 What Still Refuses to Do
…How I Built It
Still was built from the ground up around open-weight models, zero-AI deterministic guardrails, and calm web aesthetics:
1. Dual Inference Engine (Hosted + 100% Offline Local)
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Hosted Mode: Powered by Google's open-weights Gemma 4 (
gemma-4-26b-a4b-it) via the Google GenAI SDK, tuned to be warm, friendly, and ice-breaking rather than clinical. -
Local Mode with Ollama: For ultimate privacy, users can flip a switch in Settings to run 100% on their own machine using local Ollama (
ollama pull gemma4:e2b). Not a single byte ever leaves the computer.
2. The Deterministic Zero-AI Validator
To prevent AI hallucinations, scope creep, or multi-step lists, every single model output is passed through an automated heuristic validator in TypeScript:
- Strict Single Action: Rejects any sentence containing connectors like "and", "then", "after", "before", or commas.
- Gentle Verb Enforcement: The action must start with an approved grounding verb (open, glance, drink, stretch, wipe, sit, breathe, step...).
- Anti-Effort Filter: Instantly rejects high-effort triggers (reply, decide, plan, organize, schedule, fix, solve).
- Hard Time Box: Enforces an integer limit of 1 to 10 minutes.
3. Crisis & Safety Interceptor
Before any text reaches the model, a deterministic safety classifier checks for acute distress or self-harm keywords. If detected, it immediately bypasses all generation to offer compassionate, immediate crisis helpline resources.
4. Calm Aesthetic Architecture
- Frontend: React 19, Vite 8, Tailwind CSS v4, Motion.
- 3D Procedural Grounding Canvas: Three.js procedural shaders generating dynamic nature vistas (Forest, Water, Meadow) that respond gently to cursor motion.
- Micro-Voice Typing: Native Web Speech API integration with progressive permission checks and live speech stream accumulation.
- Backend: Express + Node.js (hosted on Render's free tier) with in-memory sliding quota protection and privacy-first zero-logging of user texts.
Why Does Open Innovation Matter?
Open innovation is what makes a privacy-first mental health tool like Still ethically possible:
- Radical Privacy Through Local Weights: People using Still are typing their most vulnerable, stressed-out, unstructured thoughts into a text area. Closed APIs require shipping those private anxieties across corporate networks to be logged and monetized. Open-weight models like Gemma 4 via Ollama make it possible to run state-of-the-art inference entirely offline on the user's laptop.
- Deterministic Control over Closed Black Boxes: Closed AI services are optimized for engagement loops, longer sessions, and subscription retention. Open innovation allows developers to constrain open models with deterministic guardrails that say: "Give them one tiny step, close the door, and refuse to keep them hooked."
- Free & Accessible Forever: By leveraging open-weight models, independent developers can deploy therapeutic, decompression utilities on free-tier infrastructure without facing prohibitive per-token API bills.
The Lazy Payoff
The average knowledge worker wastes 20 to 45 minutes every single day spiraling in "meta-work"—re-sorting task lists, staring blankly at notifications, and reorganizing calendars while doing nothing.
Still turns that entire exhausting mental process into a single button press. Instead of fighting your tired brain to prioritize 15 urgent tasks, Still extracts the single lowest-friction icebreaker. Doing just one 2-minute micro-action restores momentum without requiring you to make any decisions. It is the ultimate productivity hack for days when you just want to take it slow and steady.
Prize Categories
- Week 3: Slow and Steady (Primary Challenge Theme)
- Best Open-Source AI Application (Gemma 4 / Ollama)
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