AI Ghost Buster

"Your pocket-sized emotional support phantom 👻🎒"

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Inspiration

Studying alone for hours can feel isolating—especially when you’re stuck at a screen. A lot of students deal with that quiet kind of loneliness that builds up during long stretches of focus, stress, or even boredom. Most productivity tools don’t really help with that. They track you, time you, or nag you—but they don’t feel like anything.

We wanted to create something different. Something simple, alive, and present. The idea of a ghost came from that need for low-pressure company—a character that reacts when you talk, floats around while you browse, and encourages you gently when you're getting distracted or tired. Not a productivity coach. Not a mental health tracker. Just a quiet companion that makes the screen feel a little less cold.

What it does

GhostBuddy (aka AI Ghost Buster) is a Chrome extension that adds a floating ghost character named Boo to your browsing experience. Boo isn’t just decoration—it’s designed to gently support your focus, encourage mindful breaks, and make the online workspace feel less lonely.

Boo can:

  • Switch between Study, Relax, and Play modes, changing its behavior and background music
  • Detect what kind of content you’re engaging with (e.g. YouTube, search queries)
  • Use voice recognition so you can talk to Boo using your mic
  • Speak back to you using built-in text-to-speech
  • Use a lightweight AI system (via OpenRouter) to detect focus/distraction and respond
  • Run a Pomodoro timer that can be voice-activated (“start timer”)
  • Animate with drag-and-throw physics, bouncing off screen edges
  • Occasionally remind you to hydrate, stretch, or take a breath

Boo isn’t a coach. It isn’t a tracker. It’s just there when you need it—and quiet when you don’t.

How we built it

We built GhostBuddy entirely in the frontend, as a Chrome Extension, using:

  • HTML, CSS, JavaScript
  • A content script that injects the ghost into every webpage
  • A custom physics engine (written from scratch) for motion and bouncing
  • The Web Speech API for speech recognition and text-to-speech
  • The OpenRouter API (using the mistralai/mistral-small model) for lightweight text analysis
  • Chrome Storage API to save settings like mute state and mode
  • A music player for ambient background sounds with crossfade transitions
  • A Pomodoro timer system written in vanilla JS

We intentionally avoided any backend to keep it privacy-friendly, lightweight, and easy to run completely client-side.

Challenges we ran into

  • Chrome security restrictions around autoplay audio and microphone access
  • Balancing Boo’s personality to be reactive without being annoying
  • Severe time pressure — most of this came together in the last few days
  • Getting AI replies to feel natural without veering off-topic
  • Debugging speech features while the ghost bounced around the screen

Accomplishments we're proud of

  • Boo feels like a presence, not just a UI element
  • We built a fully client-side AI tool with voice, animation, and emotional tone
  • We got multiple systems working together smoothly: voice, physics, AI, mood logic
  • We ended up using it ourselves while working on the submission

What we learned

  • Chrome extensions can be surprisingly powerful when designed creatively
  • Small visual and behavioral details make a tool feel alive
  • You don’t need fancy dashboards to support wellness—presence matters
  • Sometimes a floating ghost is better than a calendar
  • Designing personality is as important as designing functionality

What's next for AI Ghost Buster

We’re thinking of adding:

  • Better content classification (using video metadata or transcripts)
  • Journaling or “sit-with-me” modes for quiet mental wellness support
  • More ghost expressions (sleepy, lonely, excited, etc.)
  • Cross-tab tracking to monitor overall distraction/focus
  • A dashboard or popup to summarize focus time and activity
  • Mobile or desktop versions beyond the browser
  • Agent cooperation (other tools + Boo working together)

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