Ctrl Pigeon

Inspiration

Oftentimes, when you need something done immediately at your computer, you're never there. We came up with this idea in the middle of an English lecture, trying to multitask listening to the professor, brainstorming potential essay topics, choosing potential essay topics, and actually researching them. It was clear we needed some sort of app or software that could help us balance multiple of these tasks at once and free up our own time for whatever may be presently available.

What it does

Ctrl Pigeon was developed so you can use it in a variety of situations. Whether that be writing quick notes, researching subjects on the internet, or even generating PowerPoint presentations, we created Ctrl Pigeon to solve whatever problems you may encounter when operating remotely from your computer.

How we built it

Our build philosophy for Ctrl Pigeon was realized through a combination of physical and online techniques and tools. We brainstormed in-person through conversation and debate and leveraged AI tools such as Gemini, Claude Code, and Codex to help us ideate mechanics, implement features, and reiterate concepts that didn't quite pan out properly.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into many challenges of differing complexity during our time creating Ctrl Pigeon. We had trouble deciding what languages and frameworks we wanted to use. Deciding what operating systems this project would support was also a big hurdle in our development. The most painful challenge we faced was debugging. It was a long and iterative process that ultimately influenced what features Ctrl Pigeon could and couldn't support in such a short development time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The main accomplishment that we are proud of is actually building a working software application in just a short 36 hours. Another accomplishment was when we finally got the program to interact with other programs on the computer. Otherwise, other accomplishments we are proud of are the connections we created and the amazing teamwork and creativity we were able to develop with.

What we learned

The major lesson we learned from this project was scope creep. We were definitely overambitious with how complicated and impressive we could make Ctrl Pigeon, especially with the use and offloading of work to AI tools. We learned to constantly iterate in small steps, ensuring what we have works and whether the opportunity cost of pursuing another feature is truly worth it.

What's next for Ctrl Pigeon

There are still major features to be implemented that would greatly increase the quality of life of users and features that just generally would expand the use cases of Ctrl Pigeon. A few examples include implementing arbitrary code execution, PDF/Word file scanning and reading, and the capability to perform more complex tasks.