Ṣọ́ra: check a message before you send money
Ṣọ́ra (Yorùbá): “be careful.” Written with tone marks so it isn't confused with other products named “Sora”.
Ṣọ́ra checks a suspicious SMS, WhatsApp message or screenshot, points at the exact words that give
the scam away, and tells the person what to do in English, Nigerian Pidgin, Yorùbá, Hausa or Igbo,
with a voice note they can play. It reaches people wherever they are: the web, an installable
app that works offline, a WhatsApp bot, and USSD and SMS for button phones. A one-minute
practice game teaches the signs before the next scam arrives. It runs on Gemma 4, an
open-weight model under Apache 2.0.
🥈 2nd place out of 52 teams at OPEN//BUILD 2026 (OSCA Ile-Ife Hacktoberfest).
| |
|---|
| Live demo | https://sora-ecru-kappa.vercel.app |
| Demo video | Watch the 90-second demo |
| Run locally | Setup: npm install && npm run dev |
| Headline result | On 50 fresh messages nobody tuned on, Gemma 4 + rules caught all 30 scams with 1 false alarm in 20 real messages, and every quoted red flag was really in the message (§8) |
| Licence | Code: Apache-2.0 · Eval data: CC BY 4.0 |
Contents
- Team
- Problem statement
- Intended users
- Solution
- Model information
- Architecture and technical decisions
- Setup, run, test, reproduce
- Evaluation
- Reaching people where they are
- Deployment
- Limitations, safety and privacy
- Project structure
- Contributing
- Acknowledgements
- Next steps
1. Team
| Name | University |
|---|
| Daodu Destiny | Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife |
| Oyewole Caleb | Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife |
2. Problem statement
Nigerian families get a steady stream of scam messages: "your BVN is blocked, click to verify",
lookalike bank sender IDs, fake credit alerts followed by "I sent it by mistake, please refund", "this is
my new number" requests, and fake government grants that need a "registration fee". The people most
at risk, often older parents, may read English slowly, trust official-looking messages, and have nobody
to ask in the moment. Many use button phones or have little mobile data. Their children end up as the
family's fraud desk, usually after the money is gone.
Existing tools (carrier spam filters) label a message at best. They don't say why, don't cover WhatsApp
or screenshots, don't speak Yorùbá, Hausa, Igbo or Pidgin, and don't help people without smartphones.
3. Intended users
- The "family tech support" student (18–25, smartphone, WhatsApp-native). Pastes or shares the
message or screenshot a parent forwarded and sends back a clear answer or a voice note.
- The parent or grandparent. Yorùbá-, Hausa-, Igbo- or Pidgin-first, prefers voice notes. Forwards the
message to the Ṣọ́ra WhatsApp number, or, on a button phone, dials the USSD code or forwards the SMS,
and gets a reply in their own language.
- Scenario: Mum forwards a screenshot asking “Is this true?” → the student shares it into Ṣọ́ra →
within seconds they have a verdict, the highlighted red flags, and a Yorùbá voice note to send back.
Later they play “Scam or real?” together so Mum spots the next one herself.
4. Solution
Features
| Feature | What it does |
|---|
| Verdict | Likely scam, Suspicious, or No red flags found. Never “safe”. |
| Evidence highlights | Each red flag quotes the exact phrase from the message, highlighted in place, with a one-line reason. |
| What to do | 1–3 concrete steps, e.g. “Check your balance in your bank app, not the SMS.” |
| Five languages | English, Pidgin, Yorùbá, Hausa and Igbo, with full tone marks on the web and WhatsApp. |
| Screenshots | Gemma 4 reads text from screenshots (sender ID, links, amounts). Without a model, or if it fails, Tesseract.js reads them on the device, so the image never leaves the phone. |
| Voice notes | YarnGPT2 Nigerian-accent TTS. Play, download or share. |
| WhatsApp bot | Forward a suspicious message or screenshot to the Ṣọ́ra WhatsApp number and get the verdict, steps and red flags back in your language, plus a voice note. Built on Twilio (guide). |
| Installable app (PWA) | Add to home screen. On Android, share a suspicious SMS straight into Ṣọ́ra from the share sheet. Works offline: the rules and reviewed explanations run on the phone. |
| Button phones | USSD menu and SMS forwarding on the same engine, replies sized for 2G screens. A live simulator on the website. |
| Practice game | “Scam or real?”: eight messages in five languages. Each answer highlights the giveaway words using the same rules as the checker, and ends with a WhatsApp challenge to send to family. |
| Share to family | One tap sends the explanation to WhatsApp. |
| Works without the model | If the model is unreachable, deterministic rules and hand-written translations still answer. |
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
