Down The Rabbit Hole

Homepage with math entered into the textbox
Search Page immediately after
A few steps further down the rabbit hole, as seen in the path
Freshly made wiki-page for a topic where the "learn more" button had been pressed

Inspiration

I hate Researching things. Not only is it a pain to figure out what components of a subject are worth researching, but the task of finding helpful sources to educate oneself is often psychosis-inducing (at best). I wanted to make self-education easier, less daunting, and more convenient, thus prompting the creation of Down The Rabbit Hole.

What it does

Down The Rabbit Hole receives a subject from the user and returns four subdivisions, each of which can be clicked on to create four more subdivisions of that specifically. At any point, the user can dive into a topic and read a freshly made wiki page, covering all the important factors about it. Users can shuffle subdivisions, backtrack however they'd like, and bookmark wiki pages that interest them.

How I built it

Down The Rabbit Hole was built with Svelte and Sveltekit, with functionality deriving from OpenAI's GPT-4 API. That paired with me not leaving my chair for several hours at a time was quite a good recipe for a functional product.

Challenges I ran into

This hackathon contained a lot of my firsts. I had never done a hackathon alone before. I had only used Sveltekit twice before (but in groups). I had never set up and applied GPT-4 API, or created Svelte stores connected to LocalStorage. Trying to learn all of these new things while on a time proved to be incredibly challenging for me.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm incredibly proud that it works, and it works well. The vision I had for the app is essentially what came out. I couldn't have wished for much more.

What I learned

Nearly every single interesting-looking piece of Down The Rabbit Hole represents something new that I learned. There was nearly nothing that I was familiar with in Svelte, but now I have a much better understanding of stores, redirections, functions, event handlers, API implementations, and more.

What's next for Down The Rabbit Hole

I would really like to add the CSS stylings to make the website dynamically functional, such that it could be used on mobile devices as well. Unfortunately, I did not have the time for that in this hackathon, but I intend to do it regardless!