Jot. | Devpost

Inspiration:

1 in every 5 adults struggle with having a mental illness. Personally we know people that take meditation to help with their mental illness. However we also know that a lot of people don’t like to openly acknowledge their problem, so we wanted to provide a way where people can easily write down their thoughts and create an efficient journal. This journaling app makes it easier for people to start writing and understand their emotions. This is a simple space where people can check in on their mental health and get gentle guidance.

What it does:

JOT. lets users sign up or log in to their profile, and choose between random journaling or category journaling. In random mode, users can write freely while an AI gives small guiding questions. In category mode, users pick or create sections like academic, social, or family. Entries are stored in monthly folders and can be searched by name or journal number. The AI provides both weekly and monthly reports for users to evaluate their summaries, patterns, and trends. Each week, the AI creates a simple report with positive, neutral, and negative percentages and short suggestions. While the monthly reports are more detailed and provide statistics of the user’s behavior. Additionally, every page has a bottom bar for home, past entries, and profile.

How we built it:

We built the frontend using Nextjs and React. For the backend, we used both Nextjs server routes and Python. Python handles the AI analysis, tone detection, and weekly summaries. The database stores users, entries, categories, and tone scores. A scheduled Python task runs for the weekly reports. The journal editor has a Notion style feel. We made the UI/UX simpler to have a clean effect and is easier for the users to use.

Challenges we ran into

We had to make AI prompts that feel gentle and not like medical or robot advice. Also it was a little difficult to organize entries by month and category without the AI getting confused. We also had to be careful while generating our prompts to ensure we were being efficient.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that the journaling flow is simple and smooth and the entries save neatly with a good structure. The system uses proper AI’s guidance in both random and category modes. The weekly summaries gives helpful insights without being too complex.

What we learned

We learned the importance of clear communication between frontend and backend teams and gained hands-on experience working with AI-powered tools, APIs, and real-time data processing. Additionally, we learned how to blend Nextjs with Python and how to generate natural prompts. Finally, all of our team members don’t have much experience with GitHub, so collaborating on it without any major issues was a good experience.

What's next for Jot.

Looking into the future, we want to add mood charts, reminders, more customization, and stronger privacy settings. Our goal is to give users a supportive and personal place to track and understand their mental health over time.