good-points

Inspiration

People want to do good but often get stuck between intention and action. We wanted one place that connects small daily kindness with real volunteering and community, so “doing good” becomes easier, more visible, and more social.

What it does

Good Points combines personal kindness challenges with community volunteering. Users complete daily acts of kindness (Easy / Moderate / Hard) to earn points and streaks, and create or join volunteer events like park cleanups and food drives. They can share completions, connect with friends, like and comment on each other’s activity, and see a global impact dashboard all in one app. Optional AI helps generate personalized challenges; location features help find events near you.

How we built it

We built it with Next.js 14 (App Router), TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS. The backend uses local SQLite via better-sqlite3 with bcrypt and JWT for auth, so it runs without cloud databases or auth providers. We added optional integrations: OpenAI for task generation and Google Maps (Geocoding + Places) for location autocomplete and “events near me.”

Challenges we ran into

Balancing gamification with real-world volunteering making the app engaging without making it shallow required careful product choices. Hydration issues came from loading fonts in inline styles; we fixed that by moving font loading to the layout. We also made location work with or without a Google API key so events still work when geocoding isn’t set up.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We shipped a full product: auth, daily challenges, volunteering, feed, friends, community wall, badges, leaderboard, and impact stats. It’s self-contained (SQLite + local auth), optional AI and location integrations, and a cohesive dark UI.

What we learned

We learned that a small set of clear features (points, streaks, events, social feed) can tie together personal habits and community action. Using SQLite and local auth simplified setup and let us move fast without backend services. We also saw how important it is to design features (like location) to work both with and without third‑party APIs.

What's next for good-points

We plan to add push notifications for event reminders and streak nudges, in-app event chat or threads, calendar integration, and richer badges. We’d like to support nonprofit and community partners with simple management tools and explore lightweight mobile deployments (e.g. PWA or React Native) to reach more users.