Inspiration

Hackathons are one of the best ways for students and developers to learn, innovate, and build impactful solutions. However, discovering the right hackathons is surprisingly difficult. Information is scattered across websites, LinkedIn posts, Discord communities, social media, and organizer pages. Participants often miss deadlines, while organizers struggle to reach the right audience.

We wanted to solve this problem by creating a single intelligent platform that makes discovering, tracking, and participating in hackathons simple, personalized, and engaging. That idea became Findathon.

What it does

Findathon is an AI-powered hackathon discovery platform that centralizes hackathons from multiple sources into one seamless experience.

Users can:

🌍 Explore hackathons through an interactive map.
🔍 Search using AI-powered filters and smart recommendations.
📅 Track upcoming events through calendar and timeline views.
⭐ Save hackathons, manage bookmarks, and build personal collections.
👥 View community reviews, ratings, and organizer information.
📝 Organizers can submit and manage hackathons through a dedicated portal.

Our goal is to help innovators spend less time searching and more time building.

How we built it

Findathon is built using a modern, scalable technology stack:

Frontend: Next.js 16 (App Router), React, TypeScript
Backend: Supabase (PostgreSQL, Authentication, Storage, Realtime)
Styling: Tailwind CSS with a custom Aurora-inspired UI
Maps: Leaflet + OpenStreetMap
Architecture: Modular Domain-Driven Design (DDD), CQRS principles, event-driven architecture, repository pattern, feature modules, and production-ready code organization.

The platform was designed with scalability in mind so new features can be added without affecting existing modules.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was implementing a production-ready authentication system using Supabase SSR with Next.js App Router. Managing server-side sessions, middleware, OAuth callbacks, and cookie synchronization required significant debugging and architectural improvements.

Another challenge was designing an interactive map experience that remains responsive while supporting filtering, searching, and future large-scale datasets.

We also spent considerable time refining the project architecture to ensure maintainability and long-term scalability.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a polished AI-powered hackathon discovery platform from scratch.
Designed a clean, production-ready modular architecture.
Created an interactive map-based discovery experience.
Implemented intelligent search and filtering.
Developed a responsive, modern UI optimized for desktop and mobile.
Built a strong foundation for future AI recommendations and community features.

What we learned

This project taught us much more than building a web application. We gained practical experience with scalable system architecture, authentication, database design, API development, performance optimization, and collaborative development.

Most importantly, we learned that designing software that can evolve over time is just as important as building features.