GuildUp!

GuildUp is a gamified team task manager that uses AI to fairly distribute coordination work across your team, so it never falls on just one person.

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Inspiration

During group projects, we kept noticing the same pattern. One person always ended up doing the invisible work, reminding teammates, following up on tasks, keeping track of everything. It was exhausting and rarely acknowledged. When this hackathon came up with the theme of invisible coordination labor, we had an idea of what we wanted to build.

What it does

GuildUp is a gamified team task manager that reduces invisible coordination work by making it visible, structured, and fairly distributed. Your team shares a fantasy guild hall where you walk around as RPG characters and manage tasks through interactive stations. An AI assistant helps structure messy task descriptions, auto-assigns tasks based on each member's workload and mood, and rebalances assignments when anything changes manually.

How we built it

We built GuildUp using vanilla JavaScript and HTML5 Canvas for the frontend, with Node.js and Express powering the backend. Supabase handles our database and real-time multiplayer presence via WebSocket subscriptions. The AI features use OpenAI's GPT API for task structuring and fair assignment logic. Email notifications are handled through AWS Lambda and SES.

Challenges we ran into

Getting the AI assignment logic to feel genuinely fair rather than just random was harder than expected. We also had to design a rebalancing system that respects manual overrides while still optimising the rest of the assignments. Building real-time multiplayer presence with smooth position syncing was another tricky piece.

Accomplishments we are proud of

The assignment planner ended up more sophisticated than we planned, considering workload, mood, XP, and confidence levels, and explaining its reasoning for every assignment. We are also proud that the RPG aesthetic actually came together into something that feels cohesive and fun.

What we learned

Prompt engineering for structured JSON output takes more iteration than expected. We also learned that gamification does not need to be complex to be effective, as small touches like character classes and XP go a long way.

What's next for GuildUp

We would love to add persistent team analytics so you can track coordination patterns over time, and expand the mood system to give members more ways to signal their capacity. Deploying the backend so teams do not need to run a local server is also high on the list.

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