IOS / ANDROID / WEB

touchgrass

A nature discovery app that finds beautiful wild places near you — no AI-hallucinated trails.

Try it live

React NativeExpoTypeScriptGBIFeBirdOpenStreetMap

AT A GLANCE

15+

Data Sources

Hallucinated Trails

Social

Sightings Feed

iOS + Android

Plus Web

THE PROBLEM

Nature-discovery apps either hallucinate or don’t exist for casual explorers

Serious hiking apps assume you already know where you’re going, and AI-generated "discover nature near you" tools routinely invent trails and species that aren’t real. touchgrass needed to surface genuinely nearby wild places without ever fabricating what’s actually there.

HOW IT WAS BUILT

Aggregation over generation

touchgrass is built in Expo and React Native, aggregating more than fifteen park-service and biodiversity APIs into a single place-discovery feed, cross-referenced so a result only surfaces if a real data source backs it.

A wildlife logging strip and social sightings feed sit on top of that discovery layer, so the app doubles as a personal field log without asking the user to trust any AI-generated content about the natural world.

INSIDE THE PRODUCT

Core surfaces that define the experience

Discovery

Short hikes and wild places, verified

Every place surfaced in the feed traces back to a real park-service, biodiversity, or mapping API — nothing is generated or approximated.

Aggregation, not hallucination.

Field Log

Sightings become a running record

Tagging a bird, plant, or animal takes one tap on the place page, quietly building a personal sightings history across every outing.

A field notebook that fills itself in as you walk.

Community

A social feed for "today in the wild"

Sightings and outings can be shared with photos and species tags, giving the app a lightweight community layer without turning it into a social network.

Sharing is additive, never required.

KEY FEATURES

What makes it work

Real Data, Not Generated

Place discovery pulls from more than fifteen real sources — national and regional park services, the Hiking Project, GBIF, eBird, iNaturalist, and OpenStreetMap — so the app never invents a trail that doesn’t exist.

Wildlife Logging Strip

Every place page carries a lightweight logging strip for tagging a bird, plant, or animal sighting on the spot, turning a walk into a running field record without extra apps.

Streaks Over Gamification

Saved places and outing streaks track return visits over time, giving the app a sense of continuity without leaderboards, badges, or push-notification pressure to perform.

WORKFLOW

How a walk becomes a discovery

touchgrass is built around a simple loop: find a real place nearby, go experience it, and log what you actually saw.

Surface verified nearby places

Fifteen-plus real data sources are cross-referenced to build a discovery feed of short hikes and wild places that actually exist.

Log what shows up

The wildlife logging strip on every place page makes tagging a sighting a one-tap action during the outing itself, not an afterthought.

Build a personal record over time

Saved places, streaks, and a growing sightings history turn individual walks into a continuous, low-pressure nature practice.