SideQuest AI: a game that shows you less screen so you can see more
What I built SideQuest AI is a small outdoor exploration game with a screen-time budget built into its architecture. You tell it how long you have and what you like. It gives you one mission. You put the phone in your pocket and go outside. When you come back you take one photo, and it tells you — honestly — whether you actually did the thing. Why an app about getting off your phone needs almost…
SideQuest AI is a unique exploration game that aims to reduce screen time while encouraging outdoor activities. The app operates on a screen-time budget, where users input the duration they have and their interests. It then generates a single mission for the user to complete. After completing the mission, the user takes a photo and submits it to the app, which provides feedback on whether the mission was successfully completed or not.
The design of SideQuest AI is grounded in a screen interaction budget, meaning there are no streak counters, daily challenge feeds, social leaderboards, or achievement notifications. Instead, the app focuses on zero screen interaction after the mission has been completed, providing only a final XP score and exiting gracefully. The core problem addressed by the app is the challenge of accurately determining whether a photo matches a mission's requirements.
The AI component of SideQuest AI uses a vision model to analyze the submitted photo and determine if it aligns with the mission. However, small AI models often struggle with such tasks, leading to incorrect judgments. To address this, the app's AI system is designed to provide transparent feedback, using a verdict system to indicate whether the photo is verified, likely verified, or uncertain.
The AI model used is Gemma 3, a local model that runs on the user's device, ensuring privacy and eliminating the need for API calls.
Safety and privacy are integral to the design of SideQuest AI. The app implements a deterministic safety gate, which blocks missions that violate certain rules, such as being in open water or extreme heat. If a mission is blocked, it is not returned. The app also ensures privacy by not collecting any GPS data, using location labels instead of coordinates, and avoiding analytics or third-party scripts.
The entire app is built using open-source libraries and weights, with no dependencies on external services, ensuring a lightweight and privacy-focused experience.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
