BDT Ops Desk

Local simulated Alexa+ ops chat: fixture news, fixture repo hygiene, and an offline mock brief.

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Inspiration

Founders need a quick way to organize a morning's news, repository maintenance and next actions. BDT Ops Desk explores that workflow as a small, locally runnable simulated Alexa+ experience.

What it does

The web chat offers three operations: a headline/so-what/tag digest, repository hygiene, and a combined daily brief. The verified demo deliberately uses labelled news and repository fixtures plus a deterministic mock brief. Sample repository names are fictitious. These outputs are not live LinkedIn, GitHub or Amazon Bedrock results.

The browser calls REST routes backed by shared tool handlers. A separate MCP Streamable HTTP endpoint exposes the same three tools. The browser is not an MCP client, and this is not a native Alexa+ Preview/device integration or a live-model agent.

How we built it

Node.js, TypeScript, Express and the MCP SDK implement the local server, simulated UI and separate MCP endpoint. No cloud hosting or model credentials are needed for the offline setup.

Private MIT-licensed source and exact judging branch: https://github.com/iket72183-collab/bdt-ops-desk/tree/hackathon/offline-readiness-20261019

Reviewed commit: 723e8f752a98936fab6aec24d99c98fc91462e05. Judge invitations were sent to the six published reviewer usernames; acceptance is pending verification. The original main branch and historical media are preserved.

Contest-period work

Retained Git history records the September 20 scaffold, friction documentation and original demo assets. October readiness work added an explicit default-offline boundary before AWS client/credential or GitHub network work, fail-closed mode validation, loopback defaults, production-path tests, sanitized fixtures and clearer provenance documentation. A new captioned local demo was recorded separately from the original media. Commit dates alone do not establish absence of earlier unrecorded work.

Verification and challenges

Six production tests and the build passed independent review. Actual MCP initialize, tools/list and all three tools/call passed with protocol 2025-11-25 and offline fixture/mock provenance. Production auth and default/explicit-offline zero-recorded-outbound checks passed. Live mode was not run.

Historical FRICTION-LOG.md reports console sign-in problems and Bedrock AccessDenied during account verification. It is preserved as historical evidence, not a successful inference receipt. Optional Bedrock/GitHub paths and a Dockerfile exist in source, but their live/deployed behavior is not verified here. AWS Builder and the additional Open Source mini-challenge are not claimed without qualifying evidence.

Accomplishments and lessons

The reviewed local prototype demonstrates all three real input/request/response interactions, readable English captions and explicit fixture/mock labels. The revised video is 102 seconds, assembled from three continuous capture segments with disclosed cuts at 32 and 62 seconds. Separate MCP execution evidence is documented, not filmed. The work reinforced the value of testing actual production handlers, recording attempted network access before fallbacks, and distinguishing artifact self-QA from independent approval.

Testing and next steps

On the judging branch, run npm install, npm test, npm run build and npm start, then open http://127.0.0.1:3000/. Default mode is offline; no .env is required. See README.md for actual MCP request examples. Future live integrations would need separate access/cost authorization and validation; no deployment or native Alexa+ connection is promised.

The gallery images below are preserved historical September screenshots, not the current offline build or evidence of successful live AWS/GitHub calls. Use the current demo and judging branch for evaluated behavior.

Demo publication status

The embedded video is the reviewed 102-second offline demo, published publicly on BDT Talent Group: https://youtu.be/glC358ycayM. It shows the reviewed judging branch with labeled fixtures/mock output. The original September video remains preserved separately.

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