𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝗜 𝗖𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝟭𝟮 𝗛𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀

Most carbon footprint apps fail.

They give you a number. They give you generic advice. Awareness does not change behavior. Knowing your footprint is 8 tons of CO2 does not tell you what to do next.

I built Climbit to solve this. It is not a calculator. It is a decision engine. It answers one question: What is the best action I can take right now?

The Core Logic

Most tools focus on measurement. Climbit focuses on decisions. The system looks at your:

  • Commute
  • Home energy
  • Food and diet
  • Travel

It ranks actions based on carbon reduction, cost, effort, and relevance.

The Engineering Split

I made a critical choice. I separated math from AI.

Large language models are bad at math. They hallucinate numbers. In Climbit, the AI never calculates emissions.

The workflow works like this:

  1. You provide data via text, voice, or images of receipts.
  2. Gemini extracts the data into structured JSON.
  3. A TypeScript engine performs the actual math.
  4. The AI interprets the results to give you a personal plan.

This keeps the data accurate and the experience personal.

The Tech Stack

  • Next.js 15 and React 19
  • TypeScript and Tailwind CSS
  • Supabase and Clerk
  • Google Gemini 1.5 Flash
  • Vitest and Playwright

Solving Real Problems

Building this required solving hard technical issues:

  • Hydration: Recharts caused errors during server rendering. I fixed this by deferring chart rendering until the client mounts.
  • Security: I implemented a token bucket rate limiter. This protects expensive AI endpoints from abuse.
  • Accessibility: I used semantic HTML and ARIA labels. Accessibility is a requirement, not an afterthought.

The Lesson

AI speeds up coding. It does not replace architecture.

I spent most of my time on:

  • Fixing hydration issues.
  • Validating edge cases.
  • Strengthening security.
  • Improving reliability.

The difference between a demo and a product is in these details. People do not need more climate data. They need better climate decisions.

Source: https://dev.to/divyanshu_sinha_72e579e28/-building-climbit-an-ai-climate-decision-engine-in-under-12-hours-3pnc

Optional learning community: https://t.me/GyaanSetuAi