HackPilot

All in one hackathon collaboration platform.

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Inspiration

Our main source of inspiration mainly come from Task management system like Trello for the Kanban, google jam board (rip) for the whiteboard

What it does

HackPilot gives hackers one room where they can:

  • create/join shared project rooms
  • find teammates through profile-based matching + invites
  • manage tasks on a real-time Kanban board
  • collaborate on a synced whiteboard
  • generate starter code from whiteboard sketches
  • use an integrated AI chat assistant across board/roadmap/whiteboard flows
  • build roadmap phases and drag tasks into implementation order
  • generate personalized project ideas from user profile + interests

How we built it

Frontend: React + TypeScript + Vite

  • UI/UX: Tailwind-style utility classes, reusable components
  • Collaboration: WebSocket updates for shared room activity
  • Board/Roadmap interactions: @dnd-kit drag-and-drop
  • Whiteboard: Excalidraw integration + scene sync/version handling
  • Backend: Vultr hosted simple FastAPI server with ngrok
  • Database: MongoDB Atlas cluster

Challenges we ran into

  • keeping real-time state consistent across clients (especially whiteboard merge/conflict cases and its weird race conditions)
  • preventing duplicate/unsorted chat events
  • handling AI request latency and “thinking” state cleanly in UI
  • balancing quick onboarding with richer auth + teammate matching workflows
  • making collaboration (board + roadmap + whiteboard + chat) feel unified

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • end-to-end hackathon workflow in one product, not just one feature
  • live collaborative board and whiteboard working in shared rooms thats sync
  • AI assistance embedded into actual workflow moments (ideation, planning, implementation)
  • created our own profiling system called NSIV which accurately helps the system create ideas and find teammates.

What we learned

  • real-time product quality depends more on state design than UI polish
  • deploying real world software via a VPS (Vultr)
  • using web sockets to stream and receive seamlessly with multiple connections at once

What's next for HackPilot

  • better multiplayer presence (who’s editing what, live cursors/activity)
  • Discord integration as most hackathons (including jam hacks) use discord as a way of communication
  • track git commits and link them to a task
  • CLI to track agents and update tickets autonomously

FAQ and judging

in the video attached, sorry for the inconvenience and below https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1e0cVzOvRQbvX2qig3_uHu-gnrUSkRU85?usp=sharing

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