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Save Your Best Friend.
Technology that helps people reunite with lost pets, using AI to match photos from lost reports with animals reported found.
- Industry
- Pet / NGO
- Services
- Design · Development · AI
- Platform
- Cloud platform
The project
Technology that brings lost pets home.
Save Your Best Friend is a reporting and matching platform. Owners post a pet that has gone missing, finders post an animal they have seen, and the platform compares the photos to surface the pairs worth a second look.
Around that sit the things that turn a match into a reunion: pet profiles detailed enough to recognise an animal, notifications the moment something promising appears, and a chat that lets two strangers arrange the handover.
The challenge.
The hard part is never the form. It is everything that happens after somebody fills it in.
Photographs are the only reliable identifier a lost pet has, and they arrive as phone snaps: bad light, odd angles, a moving animal, taken by someone who has never met it. Matching has to hold up against that variation rather than against clean, comparable images.
Reports also arrive out of order. A sighting can be filed days or weeks before or after the owner posts, so the platform cannot match once at submission and move on — every new report has to be weighed against the reports already open. And all of it carries personal detail, which means keeping enough context to recognise an animal without exposing the person who reported it.
- Input qualityPhone photographs, not studio references.
- TimingMatches can surface days after either report.
- PrivacyRecognise the pet, protect the person.
Approach
How we approached it.
Start with the record, because everything downstream — matching, notifying, messaging — depends on what a report actually captures.
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01Define the record
Decide what a report has to capture for a stranger’s photograph to be comparable at all.
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02Shape the flows
Two routes in, lost and found, short enough to finish on a phone in a hurry.
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03Match continuously
Compare every new report against the reports still open, not just at the moment it is filed.
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04Close the loop
Turn a possible match into a notification, a conversation and a reunion.
Design & architecture
The architecture.
Four layers: what people touch, what runs the matching, what it is stored in, and what it all sits on.
01Experience
- Lost report
- Found report
- Pet profiles
- Chat
02Intelligence
- Image matching
- Match surfacing
- Notifications
03Data
- Pet records
- Photo store
- Open reports
04Foundation
- Cloud backend
- Privacy & security
Solution
What we shipped.
Technology
The system.
Described as capabilities rather than logos: each part is a piece of engineering with a job.
01Community
- Lost & found reportingTwo short reporting flows, built for a phone in a stressful moment.
- Pet profilesPhotographs and distinguishing details held as one record.
- ChatA direct line between owner and finder inside the platform.
02Intelligence
- AI image matchingPhotographs compared across reports to flag likely matches.
- NotificationsAlerts that reach the owner when a possible match appears.
03Foundation
- Cloud backendServices for reports, images, matching and messaging.
- Privacy & securityPersonal details and conversations protected by design.
Outcome
What it delivers.
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01
One place for lost and found
Reports that used to scatter across social posts, notice boards and group chats live in a single system.
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02
Matching that keeps working
Photo comparison runs against the reports still open, so a match can surface long after either was filed.
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03
A safe way to make contact
Owner and finder can talk and arrange a reunion inside the platform.
Gallery
Project gallery
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Lost report
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Feature matching
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Owner notified
Next project
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