I'd love to see a project that actually analyzes every supplement on the market to make sure it actually contains what it claims to, contains it at the listed dosage, and to show anything else found (heavy metals for example). That's not something AI can do for us though since it'd involve physically collecting and testing samples.
That's where I want to take this project.
At the moment, my focus is on what I can do by aggregating and analyzing the available data. Extracting ingredients, normalizing them, normalizing quantities across every supplement, etc. This has already proven to be a lot bigger undertaking than I could have imagined at the beginning of this journey. I had learn a lot about databases, scraping, LLMs, and evals. But it has been a tremendously fun (if sometimes overwhelming) journey.
First, I need to figure out how to monetize what I've built so far. And maybe I cannot, in which case I will start over. But I am trying to find my niche that people uniquely value. So far I found that there are is a pull from people chasing deals (e.g. finding products containing specific ingredients with the highest price per mcg) and people seeking for niche ingredients. This is not exactly the target audience I had in mind when building this, but I am glad they are finding value.
Evolving into performing actual lab tests and producing our own high-quality supplements is my dream.
I've learned from my last sprint that this project can get overwhelming. So now I am making it my priority to build a community of people I can reach out to for feedback and direction. If supplements is your thing, I would greatly appreciate being able to chat with you from time to time (even if it just a quick email!)
I am at lilouartz@gmail.com