Market Owl

MarketOwl dashboard
Brochure (Outer Pages)
Brochure (Inner Pages)
Algorithm design for message generation

Inspiration

While searching for summer housing, one of us realized how helpful it would be to have a tool that could negotiate automatically. As college students on a budget, we’re always looking to save money by buying used items—most commonly on Facebook Marketplace. But messaging strangers online can be intimidating, especially when you don’t know what to say or how to negotiate. Sellers have all kinds of personalities, and negotiation takes strategy and adaptability.

What it does

MarketOwl is an AI-powered negotiator for Facebook Marketplace. It analyzes listings and messages from sellers to help you get the best deal. Users simply provide a listing URL, and the app generates optimized negotiation messages tailored for the seller.

How we built it

Frontend: Built with Next.js and Tailwind CSS
Backend: Powered by FastAPI with a custom REST API
Image Analysis: Used Ollama and LLaMA to detect defects in product photos
Message Generation: Fine-tuned a model using Modal to craft negotiation messages

Challenges we ran into

Web scraping was tricky due to limited free trial credits and inefficiencies—the scraper pulled all listings instead of just one.
Modal was a new tool for us, and we ran into several bugs that blocked progress and required troubleshooting.