Convoco: Elevating the Art of Debate

Real-time debate platform with AI moderation. Create or join discussions, get instant feedback on your arguments, and improve your skills through timed rounds and objective analysis.

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About the Project

Inspiration

Convoco was inspired by the need for a dedicated platform where people could engage in structured debates while receiving objective feedback. Traditional debate formats often lack immediate analysis, and online discussions can quickly become unproductive without moderation. I wanted to create a space where users could practice their argumentation skills in a timed format with AI-powered guidance.

What We Learned

Our team gained valuable experience in:

  • Implementing real-time applications with Firebase
  • Integrating AI for content analysis and moderation
  • Managing user authentication flows securely
  • Designing UX for timed debate interactions
  • Creating effective scoring algorithms for argument quality
  • Optimizing speech-to-text conversion for debate contexts
  • Balancing structure and flexibility in competitive formats

How It Was Built

  • React
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Firebase (Authentication, Firestore)
  • Google Gemini API
  • Google Cloud Speech-to-Text
  • Headless UI
  • Vercel

Challenges Faced

Several significant challenges emerged during development:

  • Real-Time Synchronization: Ensuring that debate states updated correctly for both participants required careful handling of Firebase listeners and state management
  • AI Response Time: Balancing thorough analysis with responsive feedback required optimization of the AI prompts and processing pipeline
  • Timer Accuracy: Creating consistent timing across different devices for the timed debate rounds proved technically challenging
  • Fair Judging: Developing an objective scoring system that evaluated arguments based on quality rather than position required extensive prompt engineering
  • User Experience: Designing an interface that guided users through the structured debate process while remaining intuitive took multiple iterations

The most difficult challenge was creating the real-time debate arena where users could see their opponent's arguments immediately and receive AI feedback without disrupting the flow of debate.

Built With

  • firebase-(authentication
  • firestore)
  • google-cloud-speech-to-text
  • google-gemini-api
  • headless-ui
  • next.js
  • react
  • tailwind-css
  • typescript
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