COMAT: AI-Visual Powered Comrade Marketplace 🎓🚀

"Stop scrolling, start selling." > COMAT is a specialized C2C marketplace designed to solve the inefficiencies of informal university trade. By integrating Gemini Pro Vision AI, COMAT eliminates the "Brain Fatigue" and "Manual Entry Friction" found in traditional campus WhatsApp/Telegram groups.

---

🧠 The Engineering Challenge

Current campus resale relies on disorganized chat histories, leading to Information Overload and Decision Fatigue (Cognitive Load Theory). COMAT acts as a centralized "Guaranteed Buyer" pool—providing an AI-searchable marketplace that ensures sellers get fair value and buyers find essentials without the mental exhaustion of combing through messages.

✨ Key Features

• 🤖 AI-Driven Listing (Gemini Pro Vision): Simply snap a photo. The AI identifies the item, suggests a category, and generates a draft price in Ksh, reducing listing time by ~70%.
• 💬 Seamless WhatsApp Bridge: One-tap negotiation. Connects buyers and sellers directly through their preferred communication channel without losing context.
• 📍 Secure Campus Logistics: Integrated location-aware features for standardized, safe meetup points within the university geography.
• 🛡️ Academic Trust: Secure Google Authentication restricted to university-affiliated accounts to ensure a vetted community.

---

🛠️ Tech Stack

• Frontend: Flutter (Dart) - Cross-platform performance.
• Backend: Firebase (Firestore NoSQL, Cloud Storage).
• AI Engine: Google Generative AI (Gemini 1.5 Flash).
• State Management: Provider/Clean Architecture.

---

⚙️ Installation & Setup

To protect project integrity, sensitive configurations (.env and google-services.json) have been scrubbed. Follow these steps to deploy your own instance:

1. Clone & Clean

git clone git@github.com:fskamau/comat.git
cd comat
flutter pub get

2. Environment Variables

Rename the .env.example file to .env and insert your API key:

GEMINI_API_KEY=your_key_here

3. Firebase Connection

• Create a project on the Firebase Console.
• Add an Android/iOS app.
• Download google-services.json (Android) or GoogleService-Info.plist (iOS) and place them in the correct directories:
  • android/app/google-services.json
  • ios/Runner/GoogleService-Info.plist

4. Firestore Rules

Ensure your Firestore rules allow authenticated read/writes for the products and users collections.

---

📂 Project Structure

lib/
├── core/          # Theme, Constants, & Shared Utils
├── data/          # Models, API Services (Gemini/Firebase)
├── presentation/  # UI Components (Auth, Listings, Profile)
└── main.dart      # App Entry & .env Initialization

🤝 Contributing

Found a bug or want to add a feature (like AI-based price trending)? Open a PR!

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.