Among our daily conversations, sleep was always a recurring topic. How much we got, how it affected our energy, how hard it was to stay consistent... We realized that while we all cared about getting enough rest, none of us were holding ourselves accountable. That’s when we thought: what if sleep tracking could be social and fun?
That idea became Slumbernauts, a way to make healthy sleep habits something you share with friends, not just your alarm clock.
Slumbernauts is a social sleep-tracking web app that turns better sleep into a friendly game. Users can form or join private “spaceships,” track their nightly sleep hours, and compete with friends on a real-time leaderboard.
The app also integrates the Google Gemini 2.5 model to offer personalized sleep insights, encouraging healthier habits through AI-generated feedback and motivation.
We built our frontend using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create an engaging and intuitive interface. For the backend, we used Firebase for authentication, real-time data storage, and hosting.
To handle AI functionality, we deployed Netlify functions that securely call the Google Gemini 2.5 API, allowing us to generate personalized insights without exposing our API key.
As a team of freshmen, this was our first time integrating a generative AI model. We learned a lot about API security, asynchronous data management, and connecting multiple backend services smoothly.
Some of our biggest technical challenges included implementing real-time leaderboards, creating private cohorts with unique access codes, and synchronizing sleep data across multiple users.
We also struggled initially with keeping our API key safe and ensuring smooth communication between the frontend and backend. After researching Firebase’s real-time database structure and consulting open-source projects, we successfully built scalable solutions for data syncing and security.
Looking ahead, we plan to enhance Slumbernauts with features like:
- A streak tracker to reward consistent sleep habits
- AI-powered summaries of weekly or monthly sleep trends
- Push notifications and calendar integrations to help users plan their rest
- Social badges and challenges to make friendly competition even more engaging