Tendril: a garden assistant you barely have to open

Description and use

Tendril is a local garden assistant that creates a weekly watering and pest‑check plan based on weather forecasts, displays it as a lock‑screen image, and allows voice or tap check‑ins. It runs entirely on the user’s machine with open‑source models.

Problem

Gardeners need a lightweight, local assistant that plans watering and pest tasks based on weather and plant data without constant phone interaction.

Outcome

Tendril delivers a concise, locally generated watering and pest plan that adapts to weather, reduces phone usage, and keeps all data on the user’s machine.

Workflow

• Set city and plant list via QR code or UI
• Every Sunday 7 AM: fetch Open‑Meteo forecast
• Run Qwen 2.5 (3B) via Ollama to generate JSON plan
• Validate plan with Pydantic; retry or fallback to rule‑based planner
• Render plan as lock‑screen image with Pillow
• Each morning: check sky, adjust today’s tasks if needed
• User taps Done or speaks note; faster‑whisper converts to text
• Model parses note, updates plan, replans week if pests noted
• Display gentle reminder after 6 PM if tasks pending

Evidence

It plans the week from the weather. Every Sunday at 7 AM it reads the forecast, and a small open model running on my own machine writes a plan

Source

It checks the sky every morning. If rain shows up overnight, or a heat spike, it quietly rewrites just today's tasks.

Source

The plan is one picture. It's made to fit a phone's lock screen, with the top third left empty for the clock.

Source

Tell it what you did. Tap Done, or hold the mic and say something like "Watered the chillies, there are aphids under the tulsi leaves."

Source