HackPulse Alexa+

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  home page

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  sprint plan + mcp server

Inspiration

Hackathon opportunities are scattered across listings, and important rules, deadlines, eligibility conditions, and submission requirements can be easy to miss. We wanted to make finding and preparing for hackathons more systematic.

What it does

HackPulse Alexa+ is a multimodal hackathon advisor presented through an Echo Show-style web interface and an MCP server. It helps builders discover and rank opportunities using feasibility scores, inspect official rules and their provenance, compare listings against rule information, and generate a structured 15-hour sprint plan.

How we built it

The project combines a Python backend, SQLite-backed hackathon and rule-audit data, a browser-based interface, and a Streamable HTTP MCP server using protocol version 2025-11-25. The interface supports typed commands and browser speech capabilities where available. The MCP tools expose discovery, rule auditing, comparison, and sprint planning to compatible clients.

Challenges we faced

We focused on making the system dependable under demo conditions: handling natural-language search terms, avoiding incorrect event matches, distinguishing live-verified rules from fallback data, escaping user input, and testing the app in a free-hosted environment.

What we learned

We learned how to connect an interactive web interface to structured backend tools, make rule provenance visible, design practical planning workflows, and test an MCP service from local development through public deployment.

What's next

Future work could include broader ingestion coverage, more robust persistence, additional compatible voice clients, and further validation of rule changes across event sources.

Built With

• css
• docker
• github-actions
• html
• javascript
• mcp
• playwright
• python
• render
• sqlite