Rest&Vest | Devpost

Inspiration

Our project was inspired by firsthand frustration from one of our teammates who has direct connections with venture capitalists (VCs). He made us understand that they often shared how difficult it is to find timely, reliable information about startup products, which is an essential factor for making smart investment decisions. This gap motivated us to build a solution that makes discovering and tracking startup innovations effortless.

What it does

Rest&Vest leverages cutting-edge AI agents, such as Gemini and Fetchai, to automate the discovery and aggregation of startup product information from a wide range of online sources, including company websites, press releases, news articles, and social media channels. • Gemini helps analyze and extract relevant product data using natural language processing to understand the context and importance of new updates. • Fentch.ai specializes in smart web crawling and data extraction, efficiently gathering information even from complex or unstructured sources. Together, these AI agents continuously scan the digital ecosystem in real time, enabling Rest&Vest users—venture capitalists, investors, entrepreneurs, and startup enthusiasts—to effortlessly stay up to date on the latest product launches, feature updates, and market trends. This intelligent automation saves users time and helps them make better-informed decisions by delivering curated, trustworthy insights all in one convenient platform.

How we built it

We used a bunch of tools that worked well together. Gemini 2.5, OpenManus, Browser Use, and Playwright help grab and move around data. We keep everything safe in MongoDB Atlas. Flask runs the backend stuff, and we hosted it on DigitalOcean. Fetch.ai and Linkd help automate parts that would be super boring to do by hand. Next.js is our frontend, and we designed it using Figma. The site works on laptops and phones without any weird issues.

Challenges we ran into

Setting up Flask to talk nicely with Next.js was kinda tricky. Keeping MongoDB connected without bugs took longer than we thought. Playwright scripts sometimes broke when servers restarted, which was annoying. Making sure everything looked good on both laptop and phone was harder than it sounds.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We got AI workflows to actually work, which felt pretty cool. We set up a full server on DigitalOcean without blowing stuff up. The app runs smooth on both web and mobile, like it’s supposed to. We made a clean design from Figma and actually shipped it, not just stared at it.

What we learned

We learned how annoying it is to get APIs to work together. We realized Flask and Next.js need a lot of attention to stay connected. Browser automation is powerful but also kinda goofy when it breaks. We figured out how to keep servers cheap but still fast enough for real users.

What's next for Rest&Vest

We wanna add real-time notifications and smarter recommendations. We’re thinking about building a real mobile app too, not just mobile web. We’ll probably upgrade the automation stuff to be even smoother. Maybe move to Kubernetes if we grow bigger, but like, not right now.