G.A.I.A.

01 — Intelligent Plant Guidance

Ask G.A.I.A. about any plant: identification tips, growing conditions, soil preferences, companion planting, medicinal uses, foraging safety, harvest timing, and more. She draws from a comprehensive botanical knowledge base built for real-world application — not just Wikipedia excerpts, but practical, field-tested information organized for the way gardeners, foragers, and herbalists actually think.

02 — 3D Avatar Interface

Interact with G.A.I.A. through a Three.js-rendered avatar that brings the experience to life. More than a chatbot in a text box — she's a companion with presence and personality, designed to make learning feel personal and engaging. Her expressions and animations respond to the conversation, creating a sense of genuine interaction.

03 — Voice Interaction

Speak to G.A.I.A. naturally using built-in speech recognition (Whisper) and synthesis (Piper TTS). Hands-free operation means you can consult her while your hands are in the soil, while identifying plants in the field, or while preparing herbal remedies at the kitchen counter. No typing required.

04 — Knowledge Graph Visualization

Explore the interconnected web of botanical knowledge visually. See how plants relate to each other through companion planting networks, shared ecosystems, overlapping medicinal properties, and historical uses — rendered as a living, navigable network that mirrors the mycelial web itself.

05 — Contextual Memory

G.A.I.A. remembers your garden, your growing zone, your soil conditions, and your past conversations. Ask her about your tomatoes in July, and she already knows you planted San Marzanos in raised beds with compost-heavy soil. She adapts her guidance to your specific context over time.

Beginner Gardeners

Not sure what's growing in your yard? G.A.I.A. can walk you through plant identification, explain what thrives in your growing zone, and help you plan your first garden bed with companion planting suggestions.

Foragers

Cross-reference wild plants against look-alikes, check edibility and toxicity, learn seasonal availability, and build confidence in the field. G.A.I.A. is the field guide that talks back.

Herbalists

Research medicinal properties, preparation methods, dosage considerations, contraindications, and traditional uses across multiple herbal traditions. Cross-reference materia medica instantly.

Homesteaders & Permaculturists

Design food forests, plan crop rotations, understand soil ecology, and manage integrated pest control with a knowledgeable companion that understands regenerative systems thinking.

Educators & Students

Use G.A.I.A. as a teaching tool in botany, ecology, and environmental science. Her knowledge graph visualization makes complex ecological relationships intuitive and explorable.

G.A.I.A. is built on solarpunk principles: technology should serve ecological literacy, not extract from it. She's distributed like seeds — designed to run anywhere, owned by the person who grows with her, beholden to no server farm or subscription model.

Privacy isn't a feature; it's a foundation. In an era where most AI tools require your data to function, where every query is logged and monetized, G.A.I.A. proves that intelligence can be generous without being extractive. Your garden journal, your medicinal notes, your foraging spots — they stay on your device. Period.

She doesn't replace human understanding — she augments it. G.A.I.A. is the bridge between ancient botanical wisdom passed down through generations and modern computational power capable of synthesizing it all. She's designed for resilience in the face of environmental and technological uncertainty — because the knowledge of how to feed and heal ourselves should never depend on a corporation's uptime.

Local AI Engine

G.A.I.A. runs a locally-hosted language model through Ollama, meaning all AI inference happens on your own hardware. No API calls to external servers. No usage limits. No monthly fees. The model is optimized for botanical knowledge and tuned for practical, accurate plant guidance.

Botanical Knowledge Base

A curated SQLite database of plant information, growing guides, medicinal properties, companion planting relationships, and foraging data. This isn't a generic AI hallucinating plant facts — it's a retrieval-augmented system grounded in verified botanical sources, cross-referenced and structured for accuracy.

Voice Pipeline

Whisper handles speech-to-text locally, converting your spoken questions into queries. Piper TTS synthesizes G.A.I.A.'s responses into natural speech. The entire voice pipeline runs on-device — your voice data never touches the internet.

Interactive Frontend

Built with React and Three.js, the interface features G.A.I.A.'s 3D avatar, a conversational chat panel, and an explorable knowledge graph. The entire application runs in your browser, communicating only with the local backend on your own machine.

Image-Based Plant ID

Point your camera at a plant and let G.A.I.A. identify it using on-device vision models. No uploading photos to a server. Instant identification in the field, even without cell service.

Garden Journal & Tracking

Log your plantings, track growth, record harvests, and annotate your garden over time. G.A.I.A. uses this history to give increasingly personalized advice — learning what works in your specific soil, climate, and conditions.

Community Knowledge Sharing

Opt-in peer-to-peer knowledge exchange. Share your garden data, foraging notes, and local growing tips with other G.A.I.A. users in your bioregion — building collective intelligence without centralized data collection.