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“Paste a saved copy of a hackathon page, add a line about you.”
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“Can I enter? No, with the exact quote from the page.”
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“Deadline converted to IST, plus required and optional submission items.”
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“Sample page: no timezone, so no guessed deadline. Submission items are still listed.”
Inspiration
Hackathon pages are long, and the details that decide whether you can enter are easy to miss. While looking at hackathons I almost misread a deadline's timezone, and I found one that was only open to professionals and post-grads after reading most of the page. I wanted a tool that pulls out the key facts and never guesses.
What it does
Hackathon Decoder takes the text of a hackathon page, plus an optional line about you, and gives three answers on one screen:
- Can I enter? Yes, No or Unsure, with the exact quote from the page that decided it.
- My deadline: converted to Indian time (IST), with days left.
- What I must submit: a checklist split into Required and Optional items.
If the page doesn't settle something, it says so. A missing timezone shows "Couldn't convert this reliably" with the quoted text, never an invented time.
How I built it
I built it plan-first with the Devpost Learn skills, using scope, PRD and spec files before any code. It's one Python file with Streamlit running locally. Gemini only reads the page and extracts rules, quotes, raw deadline text and submission items. My own Python code verifies each quote against the pasted text and does the IST conversion and day count, so dates are never invented.
Challenges
- Free-plan limits on two coding agents meant switching tools mid-project.
- Gemini calls sometimes stalled, so I added a 60-second timeout with a retry button.
- Early versions dropped required checklist items and failed on timezone formats like "GMT+5:30", which testing on real pages caught.
- Keeping my API key out of the public repo.
What I learned
Planning before building keeps a project small enough to finish. Letting the AI read and letting plain code calculate makes the result easier to trust. Testing on real pages found problems that made-up examples didn't.
Limitations
It needs internet and a free Gemini API key, works only on text you paste, and nothing is saved. The AWS page in my demo is a saved copy, and the second demo page is a sample I wrote.
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