Common Ground

Inspiration

Common Ground came from a pretty simple observation: students are constantly surrounded by major civic issues, but civics class does not always make those issues feel real.

Kiran and Aarush first started thinking about this after meeting on the Supreme Court at American Legion Boys State, where government felt less like something from a textbook and more like something people argued about, organized around, and tried to make work. David brought in experience from FRC and government class, where we kept noticing the same thing: students are expected to understand the future of their communities, but they rarely get to practice making the kinds of decisions that shape those communities.

Since the hackathon theme was the future city, we wanted to build something that asked a bigger question: if future cities are shaped by AI, climate pressure, automation, surveillance, housing, energy, and public trust, how do students learn to think through those tradeoffs before they are the ones making them?

That idea became Common Ground, a future-city civics simulator where students make public decisions, listen to stakeholders, defend their reasoning, and see the consequences of their choices.

What It Does

Common Ground puts students in the role of a city council member in the fictional Northstar City. Instead of only memorizing terms, students work through realistic future-city problems, such as:

approving an AI data center during a drought
regulating robotaxis
deciding how much surveillance is too much
responding to emergency power shortages
creating rules for algorithmic hiring and AI governance

In each scenario, students hear from different stakeholders, choose a policy direction, pick a civic action like voting, amending, holding a town hall, or building a coalition, and then explain their reasoning.

After that, the app shows how the decision affects the city through metrics, public reaction, and a term-long record. An AI mentor gives feedback on the student’s reasoning, not their political opinion, using categories like understanding, perspective, reasoning, and impact.

By the end, students receive a civic report card and a reelection-style result, so their choices turn into a visible story instead of a one-time quiz.

How We Built It

We built Common Ground with Next.js 16.2.9, React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Zod, Supabase, , Google Gemini, Motion, Vitest, Testing Library, Playwright, Vercel, and Codex.

The app is built around three main parts: a game engine, structured civic scenarios, and an AI mentor. Zod helps keep our scenario data, decisions, report cards, and AI outputs consistent. The game logic handles outcomes and city reactions, while the AI mentor responds to the student’s written explanation.

We also made sure the project could run in demo mode. That way, even if live AI or database credentials are not available during a presentation, the core experience still works.

Challenges We Faced

The hardest part was making civic decision-making feel engaging without making it feel fake. Civics is complicated. If we simplified the issues too much, the scenarios felt shallow. But if we made them too detailed, the app started to feel more like homework than a simulation.

We had to find a balance between realism, speed, and clarity. Each scenario needed real tradeoffs, understandable stakeholder perspectives, and consequences that actually connected back to the student’s decision.

The AI mentor was another challenge. We did not want it to tell students which political answer was “right.” The point was to evaluate how well they reasoned: whether they understood the issue, considered other perspectives, and recognized tradeoffs. Getting that feedback to feel fair and useful took a lot of iteration.

We also had to connect a lot of systems quickly, including modern Next.js, React, TypeScript, validation, AI APIs, persistence, testing, UI motion, and game-state design.

What We Learned

We learned a lot about game design, especially how much small details matter when trying to make an educational tool feel active instead of passive.

We also learned how all the technical parts of the project fit together: frontend design, backend routes, AI prompting, data modeling, testing, persistence, and product storytelling.

Most importantly, we learned that civic education becomes much more interesting when students are asked to make decisions instead of just repeat information.

What We’re Proud Of

We are most proud of the full decision loop. Students hear from stakeholders, make a civic choice, explain their reasoning, see the consequences, and receive feedback that connects back to what they wrote.

That loop makes Common Ground feel less like a quiz and more like a real simulation. The app does not just show students future-city problems; it gives them a way to practice the judgment needed to respond to them.

What’s Next

With more time, we would add a classroom mode with a teacher dashboard. Teachers could assign scenarios, view student progress, compare reasoning growth over time, and use the different student choices to start class discussions.

We would also add more scenarios, multiplayer debate features, and better analytics around civic reasoning skills.

Closing

Common Ground is not trying to tell students what to think. It is trying to help them practice how to think when the stakes are real, the tradeoffs are messy, and the future city needs people who can listen, reason, and find common ground.