Local / Community · Case study
Mom's Guide SA
A local activity planner for San Antonio families — with AI day planning
Problem
San Antonio parents with young kids had no single place to find activities, plan a day out, and track what they had done. Existing solutions were directory listings without any planning intelligence.
Solution
A community web app covering hundreds of places and events across 16 categories, with gamification, semantic search, check-ins, and an AI-optimized day planner that builds a multi-stop itinerary from free-text intent.
Before & after
Time to plan a family day
Significant research
→ < 1 minute
Places covered
N/A
→ Hundreds across 16 categories
User retention mechanism
None
→ Check-ins + gamification
The challenge
San Antonio parents kept reinventing the same wheel — where to take the kids today, what is open, what is age-appropriate, what is worth the drive. Directory sites covered the first question. Nothing covered the rest.
What we built
A San Antonio–focused community app that starts with a rich, curated directory — hundreds of places and events across 16 categories — and layers three product systems on top: semantic search (so "a quiet indoor activity for rainy Thursdays" returns useful results), gamification and check-ins (so families come back and contribute), and an AI day-planner that turns a short intent ("easy day near Alamo Heights for a 4 and 7 year old") into a realistic multi-stop plan.
The results
Planning a family day dropped from significant research to under a minute for most intents. Check-ins turned passive users into repeat contributors. The platform is now one of the most-used local resources for San Antonio parents with young children.
What this case teaches
Directories without intelligence are commodity. Directories with semantic search, user-generated signal, and AI-assisted planning are a product. For any local-first application, the intelligence layer is where the differentiation lives.
Tools & stack