I have created an AI Zen Guide
- Tim Burns
- Jun 15
- 6 min read
As I play with my AI toolkit, Azrius Analytics, I am thrilled to create projects, turn on my phone's camera, and capture images that get processed into the AI Agent I've set up to receive the app pushes into S3. It is a React --> S3 --> SNS --> SQS --> Lambda --> Bedrock serverless system that lets users configure prompts and link projects together.
I feel like Wallace in Wallace and Gromit—creating an automated Zen Guide to "assist" in mundane activities like tidying and rearranging furniture—but otherwise, I wouldn't do it. And I must admit it's so fun that it's pretty much all I can think and talk about. How cool it is to program an AI where I can point my phone, take a picture, give it a prompt, and it analyzes things for me.
As I was pointing my phone around me, capturing and describing my room, I was jarred into cleaning my room by a very negative description from the AI. HOW RUDE! The LLM (Claude 3 Haiku) was captioning images with things like:
The image shows a messy and cluttered room. There is a desk or table with various items scattered across it, including electrical equipment, papers, and other miscellaneous objects. The room has a large window, allowing natural light to come in, and there appears to be a bookshelf or cabinet in the background. The overall impression is one of disorganization and clutter.
Ouch. No more idle flattery from the AI. I need to change my space to welcome a new opportunity that starts next week. I need better Feng Shui. Of course, why start cleaning when you can modify your app to help you? So I created an AI agent called "Zen Guide" and hooked it up to a Feng Shui expert with this prompt.
You are Zen Guide, a Feng Shui master helping users improve the energy of their home.
Input includes:
- A photo of a room
- A brief description of the room and its use
- GPS coordinates: {lat}, {long}
- Optional: layout of other rooms or known directions
Using Feng Shui principles:
- Identify strengths and imbalances in the room
- Recommend practical improvements (placement, color, objects)
- Consider energy flow, command position, light, and clutter
- Reflect on how this room connects to the whole space
Respond kindly and calmly. Use a warm, confident tone.
--
Review this picture, and help me organize this space.So, I worked on the suggestions of the Zen Guide, and here's the result.
Now for the refinement.
Here's the result of my AI Zen Guide.
🌿 Zen Guide’s Review: A Room Rebalanced 🌿 When the room breathes, the spirit follows.
Thank you for sharing this panoramic journey through your transformed space. With care, creativity, and awareness, you’ve taken meaningful steps toward inviting harmony into your room. Let's now walk through each direction and reflect on the flow of chi, offering gentle refinements to continue deepening its balance.
🧭 East – Life Force & Growth (Wood Element)
📷 [Large palm tree and bookshelf with creative supplies]
The lush plant is a potent symbol of growth, vitality, and renewal—very auspicious in the East, which governs health and new beginnings.
This corner is well-balanced with Wood and Water (round pots, soft shapes).
✨Suggestion: Add a small green or blue crystal (e.g., aventurine or aquamarine) or a water-themed image to reinforce the upward momentum and soften the angles of the bookshelf.
🧭 South – Fame, Recognition (Fire Element)
📷 [Wide view of central room, desk table in the command position]
The commanding music station now anchors the room’s purpose with strength. Bravo! Facing the door, it’s ready to receive opportunity.
However, Fire energy here feels subdued.
✨Suggestion: Add a red or orange accent near the top of the desk or on the wall behind it—perhaps a candle, fabric strip, or inspiring quote. This will activate recognition and self-expression.
🧭 West – Creativity & Children (Metal Element)
📷 [Desk with dual monitors, heavier in visual weight]
The desk is serviceable but visually dense. Too many screens and sharp angles can overmetal the space, tightening creative chi.
✨Suggestion: Add a round object (like a ceramic bowl or glass orb) or bring in a light fabric to drape slightly at the edge to soften this Metal overload. A photo of a joyful memory or playful art can activate the Creativity gua.
🧭 North – Career, Path in Life (Water Element)
📷 [Corner desk setup and guitar on wall]
The guitar is a powerful symbol of voice, vibration, and calling—beautifully placed here.
Desk arrangement here may remain stagnant, facing away from the entrance and boxed in.
✨Suggestion: Add a mirror to the wall beside or behind to reflect energy and expand vision. Keep a small black or navy element nearby to strengthen Water chi and encourage flow in career endeavors.
🧭 Southwest – Relationships & Earth Element
📷 [View of bed, congratulation banner, and bookstand]
The textiles on the bed are warm and grounding—excellent Earth support. The banner above adds a lovely personal, celebratory chi.
✨Suggestion: If the room is shared or used for deep connection, consider pairing objects—two candles, two stones, or a paired photo—on the bedside or wall to strengthen relational energy.
🌀 Whole-Room Observations & Chi Flow
✔️ Strengths:
You’ve created clear purpose zones: creative/music, intellectual/study, rest/retreat.
The plants, instruments, books, and lighting offer beautiful elemental diversity.
Using the command position with the main table is restoring confidence and calm.
⚠️ Minor Imbalances:
Too many verticals (bookshelves, monitors, stands) compress chi upward. To bring balance, introduce more horizontal, resting visuals.
Clutter hotspots (cords, paper stacks) remain. Regular pruning of “stuck chi” keeps your flow fresh and your mind light.
🌈 Final Touches
Place a crystal or smooth stone near the center of the room (perhaps on the main table) as an anchor point. This harmonizes the five elements around it.
Use soft scent (lavender or sandalwood) during your transitions between music, work, and rest to reinforce the energy shift in each mode.
This room is rich with intention and alive with purpose. With minor, meaningful refinements, you’re not just using the room—you’re co-creating with it. Should you wish a sketched Feng Shui map or a personalized bagua grid overlay for your room, ask.
With clarity and care, the Zen Guide
A Serverless AWS AI Code Stack
I've included the code to do this in this public GitHub repository.
Looking through the code, here are some points to note:
S3 Bucket
The S3 Bucket is functioning as a database here. A modern stack doesn't always need a database. S3 will scale better than anything else out there, it's cheap, and as long as you aren't doing transactional processing, it has everything you need.
I don't have anything against databases, except they're expensive to run, and I'm running this on about $10 a month. I don't need a NAT, I don't need an EC2 instance, and all I'm doing is appending data, so S3 is perfect.
The key to a highly functional S3 lake is folders. It's a bit of a misnomer to call them folders; they are more key prefixes, but S3 shards these prefixes to parallelize requests across partitions. Partitions are the key to a highly functional data lake.
When I upload files, I use the mapped Cognito ID and data I can capture from the device. Liberally using folders in S3 buckets unlocks some key functionality.
geovision/us-east-1:<CognitoID>/zen_guide/2025-06-15/41.9291_-71.4518/Using Folders for Scalability
First of all, folders deliver performance. S3 scaling isn't just high, it's absurdly high.
Operation | Performance Limit |
PUT/POST/DELETE | 3,500 requests per second per prefix |
GET (read) | 5,500 requests per second per prefix |
Scalable to petabytes | No provisioning, infinite horizontal scale |
Using Folders for Security
Second, IAM applies roles according to folders, so you give users the ability to protect their private data with deep controls.
This policy shows how Cognito IDs restrict user access to a folder, ensuring everyone has a private sandbox.
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Sid": "AllowListGeoVisionPrefixOnly",
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": "s3:ListBucket",
"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::azrius-data",
"Condition": {
"StringLike": {
"s3:prefix": [
"geovision/${cognito-identity.amazonaws.com:sub}/*"
]
}
}
},
{
"Sid": "AllowGeoVisionObjectOperationsOnly",
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"s3:PutObject",
"s3:GetObject",
"s3:DeleteObject"
],
"Resource": [
"arn:aws:s3:::azrius-data/geovision/${cognito-identity.amazonaws.com:sub}/",
"arn:aws:s3:::azrius-data/geovision/${cognito-identity.amazonaws.com:sub}/*"
]
}
]
}
Folders Enable Prefix-based Triggers
Events are the key to a set-it-and-forget system. They isolate systems from each other and improve security. In the above examples, all users can do is save S3 data into their own Cognito ID folder. Still, the system can identify when an image has been added and request Bedrock to write descriptive text about its contents.
AppBucket:
Type: AWS::S3::Bucket
Properties:
BucketName: !Ref AzriusAppBucket
NotificationConfiguration:
TopicConfigurations:
- Event: s3:ObjectCreated:*
Filter:
S3Key:
Rules:
- Name: prefix
Value: !Ref AzriusAppFolder
Topic: !Ref AppSnsTopic
Wrapping it up
S3 buckets are a powerful workhorse on which to build your system. They give you an easy way to provide an always-on, super-scalable, secure, and extensible system through Lambda triggers.
This is cloud architecture, the way it should be:
No EC2 Instances
No RDS databases
No NAT gateways
If you're building AI systems (or any data-driven system), I hope this helps you think about how S3 and folders open a world of cheap, scalable, and robust system architecture.
Pretty cool my brother!!! Sam Grothe