Reflectly

Front Page
Notes

Inspiration

We all recognize the importance of mental health and its impact on everyday life. Reflectly emerged from our desire to provide a safe space for self-expression and support for those facing mental health challenges.

What it does

Reflectly is a mental health journaling app that provides a private platform for users to express their thoughts, track their moods, and in the future engage with an AI therapist for guidance and support.

How we built it

We used Node.js for the backend and Express.js to handle routing. Reflectly uses Passport.js for secure user authentication. MongoDB serves as our database to store journal entries and user data. The front end is crafted with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Challenges we ran into

Our initial goal was to integrate the ChatGPT API for the AI therapist feature, but technical issues led us to explore alternatives. We settled on Claude AI, which posed its own set of challenges, particularly with the POST requests. We weren't able to implement it, but we are looking forward to do it after the hackathon. Additionally, we encountered difficulties storing and retrieving user phone numbers reliably.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite the hurdles, we're proud of implementing a fully functional authentication system and providing a journaling experience. We also tried to achieve an aesthetically pleasing interface, which I think we did, and we also think that after continue developing it, this website really has the potential to help a lot of people.

What we learned

Honestly, we learned a lot. For 2 of us, it was our first time in a Hackathon ever and we also noticed how despite doing well in our programming classes, we didn't have a lot of actual development experience. We are really thankful for this opportunity because we gained practical and professional skills which can only be gained from actually building something ourselves. Some of the things were about the intricacies of API integration (which we have never done before), database management, and the nuances of full-stack development. We also become adept at troubleshooting and adapting to new challenges as they arise.

What's next for Reflectly

Looking ahead, we aim to implement the AI therapist interaction, store the phone information, and introduce more personalized features. We want to continue building on this project after the hackathon and eventually deploy it for people to use.