Hint

🧠 Not sure how to get started building an app like this?

Break it into small steps:

1. Load your API key securely
   Use the python-dotenv library to load your Gemini API key from a .env file.
   In your code:

from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os
load_dotenv()

1. Now you can access your key with:

api_key = os.getenv("GEMINI_API_KEY")

1. Configure the Gemini client
   Use:

import google.generativeai as genai
genai.configure(api_key=api_key)

1. Set up the model
   Pick gemini-1.5-flash-latest for quick responses:

model = genai.GenerativeModel("gemini-1.5-flash-latest")

1. Shape the assistant’s behavior
   Instead of just sending the user question, prepend a system-style instruction like:

You are a travel assistant. You give travel advice for out of the beaten path places, not the mainstream destinations.

1. Run a loop
   Use a while True loop to keep taking user input, and call model.generate_content(...) to get the AI’s response.

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✅ Click Show Solution on the project page to see exactly how all these pieces fit together into a friendly travel assistant app.