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ORNITH — A campus network for the little things that bring people together (Built for Kiro Build Challenge)

ORNITH connects students with nearby people for everyday needs, rides, shared plans, and campus listings. Find relevant help, chat privately, and meet with safety tools built in.

Series: Campus Life (1 article)

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    ORNITH — A campus network for the little things that bring people together (Built for Kiro Build Challenge) This article

OVERVIEW

ORNITH helps students find nearby people for everyday needs: borrowing a charger, offering a ride, finding a study group, or planning a meal. It brings these requests and offers into one campus network, with matching, private chat, and safety tools.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Campus communities are full of useful requests and offers, but they’re scattered across chats and social groups. Students can miss the right post, struggle to find relevant nearby help, or feel unsafe sharing contact details and meeting strangers.

SOLUTION & WHAT WE BUILT

ORNITH turns needs, offers, rides, plans, and marketplace listings into searchable campus posts. Students can set a visibility radius, find compatible nearby posts, express interest, and continue the conversation in private in-app chat.
The project also includes ride and route listings, group plans with join requests and shared expenses, notifications, reporting and blocking, moderation, and profile trust signals. Intent parsing, matching, and safety indicators currently use explainable local rules; they make suggestions, while people make the decisions.

HOW WE USED KIRO

We used Kiro during the sprint to work from the project requirements toward a connected application: shaping the data model and API flows, building the Next.js interface, and iterating on features such as intent creation, matching, plans, and chat. We used its AI-assisted development workflow to speed up implementation and refine the project as the end-to-end experience took shape.
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ARCHITECTURE & TECH STACK

  • Frontend: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
  • Backend: Next.js API routes
  • Database: Prisma with SQLite
  • Mobile: Capacitor Android wrapper
  • Design: ORNITH charcoal, coral, sage, sand, and lavender palette

LIVE DEMO & PROJECT LINKS

ORNITH is available as a live web demo. Open the app and use Select User in the top-right corner to switch identities and explore the campus community experience.

WHAT TO EXPLORE IN THE DEMO

ORNITH brings nearby campus needs and offers into one place. The interface includes a campus radar with distance and intent filters, plus flows for rides, shared plans, marketplace posts, chats, notifications, and user profiles. The app also includes intent matching, trust and safety features, and moderation tools.

DEPLOYMENT DETAILS

The web application is built with Next.js and React, with Prisma handling database access. The project is deployed on Vercel from the main branch of its public GitHub repository. ORNITH also includes a Capacitor Android wrapper.
Deployment note: The current app uses SQLite. Vercel’s filesystem is not persistent, so data created in the live demo may not survive restarts or be shared reliably between server instances. Persistent production data will require migrating to a hosted database such as PostgreSQL.

FUTURE ASPECTS

ORNITH is designed to grow with the needs of campus communities. Planned improvements include:
  • Smartphone app coming soon: A mobile-friendly ORNITH application is planned, bringing campus discovery and community features to Android phones.
  • Persistent cloud data: Move from SQLite to hosted PostgreSQL so accounts, posts, chats, and plans are stored reliably across sessions and deployments.
  • Smarter intent matching: Improve how ORNITH understands requests and connects people based on their needs, location, timing, and interests.
  • Real-time communication: Add live chat, message updates, and timely notifications for replies and matches.
  • Richer campus discovery: Add interactive campus maps, more precise distance settings, and better location-aware search.
  • Safer community interactions: Expand reporting, blocking, verification, trust signals, and moderation tools.
  • More campus communities: Support additional colleges, configurable campus spaces, and community-specific guidelines.
  • Accessibility and localization: Improve screen-reader support, keyboard navigation, language options, and usability for more people.
# daily-life-enhancement# ai# community# student-builders

Series: Campus Life (1 article)

  1. 1
    ORNITH — A campus network for the little things that bring people together (Built for Kiro Build Challenge) This article
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