TL;DR: I built EcoAscent; a gamified eco-awareness app where a hand-drawn SVG world visually decays or flourishes based on your logged actions. This post documents the problem I was actually solving, why I picked React + Vitest + TanStack Start, how my prompts evolved across three distinct phases, and the two architectural decisions that made the whole thing work cleanly.
The Problem Nobody Told Me to Solve
Most eco-tracking apps fail for the same reason fitness apps fail: they turn a deeply personal, emotionally charged behaviour change into a spreadsheet. You log your actions, you see a number go up, you feel nothing, you stop.
The PromptWars Virtual Challenge 3 brief was deliberately open: build something that raises environmental awareness. The lazy interpretation is a CO₂ dashboard. Bar charts, a running total, maybe a comparison to "the average person." Useful, yes. Motivating, no.
The root problem I chose to target was this:
