MyAutoBenefits

MyAutoBenefits helps California households screen for public-benefit programs, review the information reused across applications, and prepare safe demonstration applications from one intake. The project was built for AI Hackathon Berkeley 2026.

What It Does

• Collects and saves a reusable household profile.
• Screens eligibility across eight California benefit programs with deterministic Flask rules.
• Prioritizes CalFresh and WIC for the end-to-end browser demonstration.
• Uses Claude for optional explanations and draft answers while keeping eligibility logic rule-based.
• Checks required documents before starting an application flow.
• Saves verified fields, confirmation details, screenshots, and application status to SQLite.

Browser Demonstration

The CalFresh and WIC flows use Browserbase for a live cloud-browser session. Playwright intercepts navigation to the public-looking application URLs and serves local mock portals, then verifies the entered fields and confirmation state before saving proof to the dashboard.

No real government application is submitted. When Browserbase credentials are unavailable, the interface uses a clearly separated simulation and does not record it as a completed application.

Technology

• React, Vite, and Material UI
• Flask and SQLite
• Anthropic Claude
• Browserbase and Playwright

Run Locally

Create the Python environment and install both backend and frontend dependencies.

python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -r backend/requirements.txt
npm --prefix frontend install

Create backend/.env with the credentials needed for the optional Claude and Browserbase paths.

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=
BROWSERBASE_API_KEY=
BROWSERBASE_PROJECT_ID=

Start the backend from the repository root.

PYTHONPATH=backend .venv/bin/python backend/app.py

Start the frontend in a second terminal from the repository root.

npm --prefix frontend run dev -- --host 127.0.0.1

Open http://127.0.0.1:5173/ and select the CalFresh and WIC demonstration profile.

Checks

The local checks do not require API credentials.

PYTHONPATH=backend .venv/bin/python -m unittest discover -s tests
.venv/bin/python scripts/verify_agent_fallback.py
npm --prefix frontend run lint
npm --prefix frontend run build

With Flask, Vite, and Browserbase configured, run the end-to-end demonstration check from the repository root.

.venv/bin/python scripts/verify_demo.py

Team

MyAutoBenefits was created by Joshua Liu, Sanat Singhal, Alan Li, and Ethan Hu.

Project Status

MyAutoBenefits is a hackathon prototype. It is not an official eligibility determination service, government partner, or production application system.