Green Swagger#

Green Swagger is an Android/iOS app built with Flutter for the 2024 Gemini API Developer Competition. While it was developed with release in mind, after considering multiple factors, I decided not to launch it, and the project is currently paused.

Why I jumped into the competition#

The first prize was a massive $300,000, and there was even a car as a giveaway prize that looked like it belonged in Back to the Future. From my perspective, it was hard to find a reason not to participate—so I committed to building a submission.

But this project didn’t start just because of the prize money. For quite a long time, I’d been thinking that the Earth’s environment was getting worse, and I had a genuinely sincere motivation: “Shouldn’t I do something, even if it’s small?”

Since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has repeatedly traded the environment for industrial and economic growth. The planet is huge, so its self-cleaning capacity seemed to “absorb” a lot of what humans threw at it. But as we kept taking it for granted, the problems grew—and now the impact feels tangible through climate change.

What scares me more is the scale and inertia of environmental issues. Once the situation gets bad enough to feel unlivable, it may already be too late to restore. And leaders of countries and companies are still human—they tend to move with near-term incentives. For them to move in the right direction, it can’t be only a small group of experts; there needs to be a broader public movement of people caring about the environment. But that’s genuinely difficult. Individuals often feel powerless. Even when we know plastics are a problem, we still order delivery and tell ourselves, “It’s just me.”

With that mindset, when I heard about the Gemini API Developer Competition, I decided to try building an app that could contribute—however modestly—to environmental improvement.

Key concepts#

Eco Action: an action that helps the environment (even a little), shared as a photo, or shared as a URL to an environment-related article/post.
Eco Coin: an in-app virtual currency you earn by adding Eco Actions, suggesting improvements for the app, or checking in daily; you can use it to support other people’s Eco Actions.
Green Bot: an AI bot that chats with users, determines whether content qualifies as an Eco Action and adds it, issues Eco Coins, and also enables environment-related conversations (the core of Green Swagger).

At its core, Green Swagger is about making eco-friendly actions feel sustainable by building motivation loops. Users add and share Eco Actions; other users send Eco Coins to encourage them and talk around the actions. Eco Actions that receive a lot of Eco Coins—and users who donate a lot of Eco Coins—rank higher on leaderboards.

Demo video (for submission)#

Here’s the video I submitted for the competition.

This was my first time editing a video. I still felt it came out pretty well, but after watching other contestants’ videos—which looked like full-on TV commercials—I honestly felt intimidated.

Result: no award, and a bitter server log#

Even after submission, I tried not to lose hope—but I didn’t win. After the results, I checked the server logs and found no test activity from anyone other than myself. In other words, it appears the evaluators didn’t even attempt to log in; the project likely got filtered out at the video/description stage (paper screening).

I didn’t think my submission was clearly behind the others, but in hindsight, maybe I was simply too biased toward my own “child.”

I spent a long time thinking about whether to launch. In the end, the decisive reason I gave up on release is that Green Swagger isn’t a “tool”—it’s closer to an SNS-style app.

The moment you launch an app like this, it’s not just feature development—you also need ongoing investment in customer support, abuse prevention, and operational issue handling. Since it uses paid AI APIs, anti-abuse work becomes especially important. With a full-time job as the main priority, I concluded that running an SNS service as a side project is realistically too heavy.

Spending about three months on it felt costly, but the project’s original goal wasn’t only to submit and release an app—it was also part of my journey to build AI capability, so I don’t regret it. For now, development is paused, with a “maybe someday” mindset.

Features implemented so far#

Below is the feature list I had documented at the time:

After installation, the first screen is the login screen. After Google sign-in, you move to the main screen.
The main screen shows an Eco Action list.
- Sort by newest or by popularity.
Tapping the Floating button at the bottom of the main screen opens the chat screen with Green Bot.
- General conversation is supported.
- If you upload a photo, share a URL, or request image generation, Green Bot checks whether the content qualifies as an Eco Action. If it can be added, it shows an “Add Eco Action” button. When you add it, you receive 50 Eco Coins.
- If you suggest improvements for the app to Green Bot, you receive 20 Eco Coins.
- The message input area consists of a gallery button, camera button, text input field, and microphone button.
  - If you press-and-hold the microphone button, speech is transcribed into the input field; when you release, Green Bot checks the text and corrects grammar, typos, and context issues.
Tapping the menu button in the top-right opens a menu drawer from the right.
- It shows profile info, your Eco Coin balance, and various menu items that navigate to their respective screens.
- Get Eco Coins screen
  - Multiple ways to earn Eco Coins:
  - Add Eco Action: Go to the Green Bot chat screen, add an Eco Action, and earn Eco Coins.
  - Suggest for app: Go to the Green Bot chat screen, suggest improvements, and earn Eco Coins.
  - Daily Check-In: Earn Eco Coins once per day via check-in.
  - Sliding Puzzle Game: Turn an Eco Action photo/illustration into a 16-tile sliding puzzle. Completing it gives Eco Coins and navigates to that Eco Action.
  - Buy Eco Coins: Purchase Eco Coins via in-app purchase.
- About Green Swagger screen
  - General introduction plus the developer’s opinion on why more people should care about the environment.
- Eco Coin Transactions screen
  - Eco Coin dashboard and transaction history.
- Top Eco Coin Sponsors screen
  - Shows top-ranked users who have supported Eco Actions with Eco Coins.
  - You can navigate to their profile screens and their Eco Action list screens.
- My Calendar screen
  - Calendar view to check your actions by date.
- My Profile screen
  - Shows profile photo, profile name, total Eco Coins donated, bio, email, URL, and a “View Eco Actions” button.
  - Bio, email, and URL are editable. To match the conversational nature of the app, the editing UI is implemented in a chat-like way.
    - When entering email or URL via microphone input, the text is corrected to match the required format.
  - “View Eco Actions” navigates to the list of Eco Actions added by the user.
- Logout
- Delete Account
Tapping an item in the Eco Action list on the main screen opens the Eco Action detail screen.
- Eco Action content is displayed.
  - For photos/illustrations, the media is shown; tapping opens an image viewer.
  - For URLs, a representative image and title are shown; tapping opens the URL Details screen. The URL Details screen shows the representative image, title, short description, summary, and the URL. Tapping the image opens the image viewer.
- The Eco Coin amount earned by the Eco Action and related features are shown.
  - If it’s my Eco Action, a “Visibility on/off” switch is shown.
  - If it’s not my Eco Action, a “Send Eco Coins” button is shown; you can choose an amount and send Eco Coins.
- Green Bot’s explanation of the Eco Action and users’ comments are shown. Sending Eco Coins is also recorded as a comment.
  - The comment UI is implemented in a chat-like way.
Long-press text menu
- Long-pressing a text area opens a Bottom Sheet menu.
  - Copy to clipboard: copy the text to the clipboard.
  - Talk to Green Bot about this: navigate to the Green Bot chat screen with the text pre-quoted, so you can ask Green Bot about it.