Law student with no coding background built a Gemini-powered Opal app to turn dead borewells into recharge wells

Euphoric_Year_3 · reddit · 2026-09-22

An Indian law student with no coding background spent about three days building a Google Opal app where Gemini reads a borewell's drilling log and decides whether the dead well can be converted into a rainwater recharge well.

Users input roof area, local rainfall, the drilling log, and water table depth. The app returns a verdict, an estimate of litres recharged per year, the rock layers found in the log, and a step-by-step build sheet a mason can follow, working in two languages.

The author invested most effort in the refusal path: if the site looks risky (e.g., a very shallow water table), the app refuses and explains why instead of producing a build sheet anyway—in testing it rejected a site with the water table at 3 m. It's a student competition entry with sample demo inputs, and the author is asking for advice on keeping Gemini conservative with incomplete drilling logs.

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