This is part of the brAIn project, Building an AI Memory Assistant for Neurodivergent Youth.
There’s some key tenets I’m trying to keep in mind, gearing this towards youth in a way that is frictionless, safe, privacy-aware, and “smart” in the sense that it NEEDS to be able to handle anything thrown at it. Kids are smart, but so are bots and malicious actors in the wide world. So to that end, I don’t think I want to store any information whatsoever about the users. We can keep it anonymous but at the same time persistent (cookies and session variables to reconnect them), and if I structure it in a specific way, maybe we can use unique access keys to link parents to youth.
Using anonymous sessions but unique access keys mean I could technically pull up any information in the database and see how it’s all linked together, but I would have no way of knowing who it’s associated with. Also, with the distributed method of storing memories, context, and keywords, it would be heavily dependent on joining tables with unique IDs and – what would the point be? Great, a youth wanted to remember his locker number and that they have a test on Friday. This is not exactly useful information to anyone. No address, contact, payment, or personally identifiable information whatsoever would be in there to associate that to anyone.
Here’s my basic list so far;
- Privacy-First: Anonymous user IDs, session-based auth, no PII storage
- Homework Guardrails: Blocks academic help while allowing memory/organization
- Smart Memory: Fuzzy question matching and auto-categorization
Voice Input: Speech-to-text for hands-free use - Rate Limiting: Prevents abuse (60 requests/hour)
- Audit Logging: Track usage and filter violations, anonymously
- Mobile-Friendly: Responsive design works on all devices
- Web Based: I can easily wrap this into a webview container to make an app
- Extensible: Modular architecture for easy enhancements
- Security: Best practices for GDPR, PIPA, PIPEDA, SQL injection prevention, and brute force prevention
From a more user-interface point of view,
- Chat interface with typing indicators
- Voice-to-text input support
- Reminders management tab
- Permissions “read only” tab
- Mobile-responsive Bootstrap 5 design
- Smooth animations and modern UI