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User Interface
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System Architecture Diagram
Inspiration
Do you have a endless list of things you want to read or learn? They pile up! During SF Hacks 2025, we thought, what if you could just listen to summaries of those topics whenever you have a spare moment? From there, Backlogz was started, an idea to turn that overwhelming list into easy, listenable learning bites using AI.
What it does
Backlogz lets you quickly add topics you're interested in. Then, just hit 'Quick Play'. The app grabs a random topic, asks Google's Gemini AI to whip up a short, conversational summary, and reads it out loud using your phone's text to speech. Think of it like a personalized mini podcast feed made from your own curiosity list.
How we built it
We built this during the hackathon using React Native and Expo, which are fantastic for building mobile apps quickly. TypeScript helped keep things organized. The magic happens by calling the Gemini API to generate the scripts and using Expo Speech to play them back. For now, topics are just saved locally on the device.
Challenges we ran into
Getting the AI call, the waiting time, and the speech playback to work together smoothly in React Native within the hackathon time limit was the trickiest part. Making sure the AI summaries sounded natural also took a few tries with the prompts.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Getting the core idea working! It actually takes a text topic, generates an AI summary, and plays it back cleanly. Seeing that main loop function smoothly in a mobile app built over these two days felt pretty great. The 'Quick Play' is simple but genuinely useful.
What we learned
Definitely learned a lot about juggling asynchronous tasks in React Native like API calls and speech. We got real hands on experience calling a generative AI like Gemini from an app and figuring out how to prompt it effectively. Expo's tools for things like text to speech were also cool to work with.
What's next for Backlogz
Next steps would involve enhancing the existing features, such as adding more robust editing capabilities to the notes section. A big priority is adding cloud backup (likely using Firebase) so topics and notes aren't just stored locally. Longer term, features like better topic organization (tags, folders), user accounts for syncing, and maybe even summarizing web articles directly from a URL could be explored.
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