Amity

Amity: A Smart Wallet for Roommates.

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Amity: A Smart Wallet for Roommates

💡 Inspiration

"Money ruins friendships."

It’s a cliché because it’s true. Walking through the UF campus, we realized that for the millions of students and young professionals in shared housing, the biggest source of conflict isn't dirty dishes, it’s finances.

Forgotten Venmo requests and awkward conversations about utility bills can turn a happy home into a war zone. We built Amity to be a third-party mediator, an intelligent agent that handles the awkwardness for you, ensuring fairness without the friction.

📊 What it does

Amity is a sophisticated household operating system that automates the financial and social governance of shared living. It doesn't just track expenses; it actively manages them:

  • It Sees: Snap a photo of a receipt; Amity uses computer vision to itemize and split costs automatically.
  • It Speaks: If a roommate forgets rent, Amity initiates a phone call using custom AI personas.
  • It Banks: Integrated with simulated banking systems to handle the ledger automatically.

🚀 Key Features

🤖 Agentic "Nag" System

Why send a notification when you can send a message? Amity uses generative AI to script and perform phone calls to delinquent roommates.

  • Multiple Personas: Choose your "enforcer." Prompt the AI to be a "Mafia Don" 🕴️, a "Disappointed Mom" 👩‍👦, or a "Formal Lawyer" ⚖️.
  • Real Voice Synthesis: Powered by ElevenLabs and the Vonage Voice API for hyper-realistic, emotive calls.

🧾 AI Receipt Scanner

Powered by the Google Gemini family, Amity actively helps you log expenses with multimodal precision.

  • OCR & Transcription: We leverage Gemini 2.5 Flash to scan receipt images and transcribe them into readable text, which is then structured and stored in MongoDB.

  • Automated Parsing: Gemini 3.0 Flash identifies the merchant, date, and specific line items from the transcribed data.

  • Smart Suggestions: Automatically suggests splits based on household members.

⚡ Real-Time Transaction Guard

Utilizing Cerebras high-speed inference to analyze every single transaction in real-time.

  • Instant Fraud Detection: Anomalies are flagged efficiently.
  • Smart Categorization: Transactions are instantly tagged and sorted without latency.

🗳️ Democratic Spending

  • Governance Proposals: Initiate a vote for shared purchases (e.g., "New 4K TV").
  • Escrow-style Resolution: Once the vote passes, Amity logs the future expense and adjusts balances accordingly.

💰 Nessie Banking Integration

We integrated the Capital One Nessie API to simulate real-world bank transfers and account management, providing a robust fintech backbone.

🛠️ How we built it

Category Technology Stack
Frontend React 19, Vite, Tailwind CSS v4, Framer Motion, React Router v7
Backend FastAPI (Python 3.12), MongoDB Atlas, Motor, Kafka Streams, Pydantic
AI & Voice Google Gemini 2.5 & 3.0 Flash, Cerebras, ElevenLabs, Vonage Voice API
Infrastructure DigitalOcean, Ubuntu, Nginx, GitHub Actions (CI/CD)

To deploy our app, we used a DigitalOcean Droplet running Ubuntu, with GitHub Actions set up for automated testing and deployment. Systemd manages the backend processes, and when the server is running, interactive API documentation is available for easy endpoint testing and exploration:

⚠️ Challenges we ran into

  • The "Silent" Error: Syncing Gemini (text) → ElevenLabs (audio) → Vonage (streaming) was complex. We had to optimize latency to prevent "dead air" during calls.
  • Strict Banking Data: The Capital One Nessie API has rigorous formatting. We built a robust adapter layer to ensure our transaction data matched their specs perfectly.
  • Production Deployment: Moving from localhost to DigitalOcean introduced CORS issues and environment variable mismatches that required systematic debugging.

✅ Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • It actually calls you: The first time our real phone rang with a "Mafia Don" demanding rent was a magical moment.
  • Seamless AI Integration: We moved beyond "chatbots." The AI is embedded directly into the workflow.
  • Full Production Deployment: Amity is live and accessible, shipped in just 36 hours.

📚 What we learned

  • Multimodal AI Power: Combining text + Voice creates a user experience exponentially more engaging than text alone.
  • Infrastructure is Key: Setting up a robust deployment pipeline early saved our project in the final hours.

🌱 What's next for Amity

  • Real Settlements: Deep linking for Venmo/Zelle to allow real-money transfers.
  • Smart Budgeting: AI-driven spending analysis to suggest household budget cuts.
  • Mobile App: Porting the React frontend to React Native.

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