ColdReach

Inspiration: Every student knows the pain of applying to 50 companies and hearing nothing back. A friend landed Razorpay through one cold email. That unfair advantage shouldn't be exclusive. ColdReach was built to give every student that same access.

What it does: ColdReach finds verified recruiter emails from top companies using Hunter.io, then uses Google Gemini AI to write 3 personalized cold emails — Formal, Friendly, Bold — based only on your real profile. One click sends it directly via Gmail.

How we built it: Built with React and Vite on the frontend. Integrated Hunter.io API for email discovery and Google Gemini 2.5 Flash for AI email generation. Deployed on Vercel. Designed with an iOS-inspired dark UI using Tailwind CSS.

Challenges we ran into: Preventing Gemini hallucinations was hardest — it kept inventing fake company achievements. Solved by strict prompt engineering. Hunter.io rate limits required retry logic. Parsing inconsistent Gemini JSON responses needed robust error handling throughout.

Accomplishments that we're proud of: Built a fully functional product in 4 hours with real API integrations. The email score meter, follow-up generator, and one-click Gmail send make it genuinely useful — not just a hackathon demo. Zero fake data, zero hallucinations.

What we learned: Prompt engineering is an underrated skill. Restricting what an LLM cannot say matters more than telling it what to say. We also learned that the best hackathon projects solve one specific pain point extremely well.

What's next for ColdReach: LinkedIn DM automation, referral request generator, and a browser extension that detects job postings and auto-suggests who to cold email. Long term — a full placement copilot for every first-generation college student in India.