JeoParody

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Education Track

Inspiration

Studying from lecture notes or dense textbooks can be tedious and ineffective. We wanted to make learning more engaging by turning static study material into something interactive and social. Jeopardy’s fast pace and category-based structure make it memorable and fun, so we asked: what if any PDF could instantly become a Jeopardy-style study game?

What It Does

JeoParody transforms any uploaded PDF into a fully playable Jeopardy-style game in under 30 seconds.

Players upload a document, enter a name, and immediately join a multiplayer game—no accounts required. AI-generated categories and clues are tailored to the document’s content, with real-time synchronization across players. The experience includes score tracking, professional voice announcements powered by ElevenLabs, Final Jeopardy with wagering, and the classic Jeopardy board layout.

How We Built It

Frontend: Next.js 16 (App Router), Tailwind CSS 4
Backend & Realtime: Supabase (PostgreSQL + Realtime subscriptions)
AI: Google Gemini for PDF understanding, clue generation, and answer grading
PDF Processing: pdfjs-dist for client-side text extraction
Validation: Zod schemas to enforce strict game board structure
Audio: ElevenLabs Text-to-Speech API for high-quality voice announcements

The system uses HTTP-only cookies for lightweight session management, Supabase Realtime channels for live state synchronization, and a self-healing AI pipeline that retries with corrective prompts when Gemini output fails validation.

Challenges We Faced

Vercel upload limits: Large PDFs exceeded serverless request size limits. We solved this by moving PDF parsing entirely to the client and sending only extracted text to the server.
Real-time synchronization: Keeping all players perfectly in sync required careful coordination of optimistic UI updates, subscriptions, and fallback polling.
LLM reliability: Gemini occasionally returned malformed or incomplete boards. We enforced strict schema validation and implemented automatic “fix prompt” retries.
Turn-based game logic: Managing player turns, skips, incorrect answers, and the transition to Final Jeopardy required a robust state machine design.

Accomplishments

Successfully generates a complete, playable Jeopardy game from any PDF in under 30 seconds
High-quality, thematically accurate AI-generated categories and clues
Smooth real-time multiplayer experience, even with players joining or leaving mid-game
Full Jeopardy feature set with zero authentication friction
Natural, engaging voice announcements using ElevenLabs

What We Learned

Client-side processing can effectively bypass serverless constraints
LLMs need strong guardrails—validation and retries are essential for production use
Real-time multiplayer apps require careful handling of race conditions and shared state
Supabase Realtime enables powerful live experiences with minimal infrastructure overhead