Aura - AI Financial Assistant

Project Overview

I designed and developed Aura - a full-stack AI personal finance assistant available on iOS, Android, and Web. Aura helps users take full control of their finances through an intelligent AI chat interface, automated transaction categorisation, receipt scanning, investment portfolio tracking, and powerful spending analytics. The goal was to make personal finance feel effortless and even engaging - something users would open every day.

The Challenge

Most people struggle to consistently track their spending and understand where their money actually goes. Existing financial apps are either too complex or lack the intelligence to surface meaningful insights. The goal was to build a product that made personal finance feel effortless and even engaging - something users would open every day.

Technical Details

• Frontend: Built with Astro and React, styled with TailwindCSS, with a focus on performance and a great user experience across Web, iOS, and Android.
• Backend: Node.js API deployed on Cloudflare Workers for global edge performance, with Turso (libSQL) as the database for fast, distributed data access.
• AI Pipeline: Implemented a natural language AI chat assistant for finance queries and a computer vision pipeline for automatic receipt scanning with 95% categorisation accuracy.
• Infrastructure: Cloudflare CDN for global asset delivery, bank-level encryption, and automatic backups to keep user data safe.

Key Features

• AI Chat Assistant - ask natural language questions like 'How much did I spend on restaurants this month?' with full voice input support
• Smart transaction tracking with 95% automatic categorisation accuracy
• AI receipt scanning - photograph any receipt and have it automatically recorded
• Investment portfolio tracking for stocks, crypto, and other assets in one place
• Powerful visual analytics with spending trends, breakdowns, and deep insights
• Partner sharing - connect two accounts for joint budget management
• Multi-platform availability: iOS, Android, and Web with automatic sync
• Bank-level encryption and automatic backups
• Freemium model with a 14-day money-back guarantee on paid plans

Results

Aura is still early, but the results are already impressive. The app has generated over 5,000 AI analyses and attracted 30+ users with an average rating of 4.9/5. One user reported cutting overspending by 65% and estimates saving over 4,000 KM per year - after using Aura to track his spending across 4 months and finally discovering where his money was going.