Pathfinder AI01 / 10
UX Case Study

A calmer way to plan the big moments

An AI-first life event planning app — built for people who feel completely lost when a big decision lands on them.

RoleSolo — product, UX, code
StackReact · FastAPI · Gemini · RAG
StatusWorking local prototype
TimelineJanuary – April 2026
Pathfinder AI02 / 10
Problem & Context

The information exists. Nobody organises it for you.

You just got a job offer in another city. Excited, slightly terrified, no idea where to start.

You Google it. 14 tabs later, you have a Reddit thread from 2019 and a list of tasks with zero context about order or priority.

The problem isn't missing information — it's that nobody organises it for your exact situation. Students and early-career folks navigating their first move, first visa, first loan get hit hardest.

Pathfinder AI03 / 10
Research & Validation

The data said: this pain is real and it's widespread.

Solo project, no formal research budget. I used two sources to understand the problem space.

📊 Fix My Itch (Razorpay) — 10k+ verified reports from 50k+ people. Relocation scored 79/100, visa applications 77/100. Not a personal feeling — a pattern at scale.
💬 Reddit & forums — r/AskIndia, r/NRI, r/TwoXIndia. The recurring theme: people weren't confused about how to do things. They couldn't figure out what to do, or in what order. One confusing step and they gave up entirely.
People fail at figuring out what the tasks are — not at doing them.
Pathfinder AI04 / 10
Constraints & Scope

Tight constraints. Deliberate choices.

Solo, secondary research only, free-tier APIs. That meant every design decision had to earn its place with zero slack.

1
Solo scope — product, UX, design, and code
2
Secondary research only — no formal interviews or testing budget.
3
India-first — built around Aadhaar, PAN, EPFO, GST, Passport Seva. Real portals, real friction.
4
Free-tier only — every API decision made with zero paid tier available.
Pathfinder AI05 / 10
Key Decisions #1 & #2

Free text input. Then smarter follow-up questions.

No dropdowns. You type what's happening — "I got a job in London" — and the AI reads it, identifies the event types, and builds from that. Real life rarely fits one category.

✍️Free text

Describe the situation like you'd explain it to a friend. No structured categories required.

🤔Clarification

2–3 smart follow-ups (visa? family? joining date?) make the plan specific to you. This is the feature, not a delay.

Pathfinder AI06 / 10
Key Decisions #3 & #4

See the plan before it saves. Your documents follow you.

Two rules guided these: AI shouldn't act without your permission, and you should never have to re-enter the same information twice.

✅Approve first

Full plan preview before anything saves. It becomes your plan when you choose it — not when AI generates it.

🗄️Document Vault

Upload Aadhaar, passport, offer letter once. Vision AI extracts fields and pre-fills task details automatically.

Pathfinder AI07 / 10
Key Decisions #5 & #6

Portal walkthroughs. A chatbot that knows only your plan.

The biggest drop-off happens when users leave the app and land on a confusing government portal. Two features close that gap directly.

🧭Guide Me

Animated cursor overlays on real portal screenshots — 8 portals. Screenshots don't break when layouts change.

💬Ask Your Plan

Scoped strictly to your tasks, documents, timeline, and city. No general noise — only execution help.

Pathfinder AI08 / 10
Visual Design System

"Dark Forest" — grounded, not clinical.

Most productivity apps feel cold and corporate. A planning app for stressful life events should feel calm and navigable — the user is a traveler, the app is their guide, the plan is the route.

Forest
Amber
Emerald
Coral
Sky
Gold
T
Playfair Display for editorial headings · DM Sans for all UI copy · JetBrains Mono for metadata labels.
→
Spring easing cubic-bezier(0.16, 1, 0.3, 1) — snappy, not harsh. Every motion is purposeful, not decorative.
Pathfinder AI09 / 10
Core Insights

Four principles that shaped the product.

The event is the root object, not the task
Deadlines and document matching only make sense scoped under a parent event. Most apps get this wrong.
RAG over scraping is a trust choice, not just technical
Wrong instructions on a visa filing are worse than no instructions. Reliability beat automation.
The gap is between the checklist and actually doing it
Knowing what to do isn't the blocker — knowing how to start the confusing next step is. That's what this app targets.
AI assists. The user decides.
Approve-before-save and edit rights aren't safety fallbacks — they're the core of respectful AI UX.
Pathfinder AI10 / 10
Final Outcomes

Working end-to-end. Calmer than anything else I've seen.

⚡
Fully working prototypeReact + FastAPI + Gemini, tested across relocation, business registration, and visa scenarios.
🧭
Execution layer, not just planningPortal guides, pre-filled vault details, and scoped chat go beyond the checklist.
🌿
Genuinely calmer experienceThe Dark Forest UI and personalised workflows reduce cognitive load on hard days.