Laurel

About Laurel

An Olympic and Paralympic moment explainer powered by Gemini. Built for the Team USA × Google Cloud Hackathon 2026.

What it does

Capture a frame from your TV with your phone, or share your screen on a laptop, and Laurel explains what just happened, the rule behind it, and why it matters. Conversational follow-ups via text or voice. Sharable links with rich previews. Olympic and Paralympic content treated as equals (3 sports each in the MVP).

Two demo scenarios

Scenario A

Judge ruling negates the highlight

Friends watching together, big moment is overturned by a judge call, group is confused. One pulls out their phone, captures the frame, gets a clear rule-based explanation in seconds.

Scenario B

Was that a big deal?

A world record falls. The user captures it, asks for significance, gets historical context with concrete past records and a sharable link to text the family group chat.

Stack

  • Frontend

    Next.js 16, React 19, Tailwind 4

  • Hosting

    Vercel

  • Backend

    FastAPI, Python 3.12, uv

  • Container

    Google Cloud Run

  • AI

    Gemini 2.5 Flash via Vertex AI

  • Embeddings

    text-embedding-005

  • Storage

    Cloud Storage + Firestore

  • Voice

    Web Speech API (browser-native)

Architecture

[Phone Camera / Laptop Screen Share / File] -> [Next.js client (Vercel)]
                                |
                                v
                  [FastAPI on Cloud Run]
                        |
                        +--> [Gemini 2.5 Flash Vision]  (sport ID)
                        |
                        +--> [In-memory vector index]   (KB chunks)
                        |
                        +--> [Gemini 2.5 Flash text]    (synthesis, SSE)
                        |
                        +--> [Cloud Storage]            (frames)
                        |
                        +--> [Firestore]                (moment metadata)
                                |
                                v
                  [Next.js client renders explainer]

Sport coverage (MVP)

Six curated sports, balanced 3:3 between Olympic and Paralympic.

  • Figure Skating

    Olympic · Winter

  • Curling

    Olympic · Winter

  • Athletics

    Olympic · Summer

  • Wheelchair Curling

    Paralympic · Winter

  • Para Alpine Skiing

    Paralympic · Winter

  • Para Athletics

    Paralympic · Summer

Credits

Built for the Team USA × Google Cloud Hackathon 2026. Apache 2.0 licensed at github.com/dawsonpar/laurel.