Virtual Ofrenda 網頁應用程式

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine

What I Built
I built Gran Altar de Recuerdos (Virtual Ofrenda), a 100% offline, privacy-first interactive memorial altar that brings the rich tradition of Día de los Muertos into the browser.

The application is structured around the authentic three-tier ceremonial altar layout:

Level 1 (El Reino de las Almas): Dedicated to the spirits with memorial portraits, lifespans, custom tags, and interactive individual votive candles.

Level 2 (El Banquete y la Memoria): The earthly feast, featuring interactive drag-and-drop / tap-to-place offerings such as Pan de Muerto, sugar skulls (calaveras), mezcal, marigold garlands (cempasúchil), monarch butterflies, and vintage floppy disks.

Level 3 (Los Cuatro Elementos): The four elements represented by water (agua pura), salt (cruz de sal), procedural copal incense smoke, and an interactive votive candle rack.

It features a dual-layer atmospheric canvas (swirling copal smoke and floating 3D marigold petals), dynamic ambient altar illumination that reacts in real-time to how many candles are lit, an in-browser harmonic sound generator, and printable keepsake memorial cards.

At its core, it includes a dual-engine AI eulogy and calaverita writer powered by local open-weight models to help people honor their ancestors, beloved animal companions, or early digital pioneers.

Demo
Experience the live memorial altar here:
👉 Live Demo

Code
Explore the full source code and contribute:
👉 GitHub Repository: SandipSAM2025/Virtual-Ofrenda

GitHub Profile: @SandipSAM2025

How I Built It
The project is built on vanilla web standards (HTML5 Canvas, CSS Grid, and modern JavaScript) coupled with local, open-source AI:

Local Inference with Open-Weight Models: The memorial leverages Ollama running locally on the user's machine (localhost:11434) using open-weight models like Llama 3.2 (1B), Mistral, or Qwen 2.5. It generates three distinct poetic styles on demand:

Calaverita Literaria — Traditional Mexican rhyming satirical verse.

Ghost in the Machine Ode — Cyberpunk tributes dedicated to forgotten open-source tech pioneers.

Solemn Eulogy — Deeply heartfelt classical memorial prose.

Zero-Dependency Procedural Fallback: If Ollama is not active or running, a procedural text synthesizer takes over seamlessly so the experience never breaks.

Zero-Asset Web Audio API Engine: Instead of loading heavy external audio files, the ambient 108 Hz harmonic drone, realistic pink-noise candle crackles, and resonant pentatonic chimes are synthesized entirely through the browser's native AudioContext.

Client-Side Image Compression: Photos uploaded for portraits are downscaled on an offscreen HTML5 canvas before being stored in localStorage, preventing browser storage limits while avoiding external image hosting.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?
Absolute Privacy for Sacred Memories: Mourning and family remembrance are intensely personal. Uploading private photographs, personal eulogies, and names of departed family members to closed, centralized cloud APIs means risking data scraping and monetization. Running an open-weight model locally ensures personal data never leaves the device.

True "Lights-Out" Offline Operation: Traditional ofrendas glow in candlelight with the power turned off. Because this project relies on local open-weight inference and native browser APIs, it runs completely offline without Wi-Fi or internet connectivity.

Zero Token Tax on Remembering: Honoring loved ones shouldn't come with a metered monthly subscription or credit balance. Open weights make personal computing accessible, free, and permanent.

Resurrecting Tech Pioneers: The modern web stands on the code written by pioneers who gave their work freely to the world. Pre-seeding the altar with figures like Dennis Ritchie and Ada Lovelace honors the open-source spirit that made this project possible in the first place.

The Spirit of It
When you light the candles on the screen, the background ambient light warms from cold purple to golden amber, the synthetic drone gently hums, and the copal smoke rises past the portraits of loved ones.

The moment that landed hardest was testing the Ghost in the Machine generator for Dennis Ritchie: seeing the terminal-style ode generate purely from an offline local model, completely isolated from the internet on my laptop, felt like a genuine spark inside the silicon—a true ghost in the machine.

Prize Categories
Grand Prize

Ghost in the Machine