Cart started as a hackathon idea, we wanted to let people track their expenses in real-time while actively shopping.
The core idea was to speed up grocery runs by generating a personalized plan, and using OCR and image recognition to identify products. It also suggests what to buy, keeps track of your time in the store, and monitors your expenses as you go, kind of like having a smart assistant for your cart.
We built the frontend with Next.js and Tailwind CSS, and used Redux Toolkit for smooth state management. On the backend, we used Node.js, Express, and PostgreSQL to handle data and API logic. OpenAI powers the smart list generation, while Google Cloud Vision handles real-time product recognition through the phone camera. Everything was deployed on Vercel for fast iterations and easy collaboration during the hackathon.
