SideQuest by Kairos

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Inspiration

As uni students, we live the daily reality of needing flexible income that actually fits around lectures, assignments, and changing timetables. Most platforms weren’t built for that kind of life, they either demand full-time availability or bury students under high fees and impersonal systems. SideQuest was born from this gap. It is a student-first gig marketplace that turns underused student time, skills, and equipment into real opportunities. By making it easy for students to share what they already have and for clients to access reliable help, SideQuest directly answers several of the core “blocks” that make up the world:

It helps communities share underused resources, skills, and infrastructure (students’ free time, abilities, and equipment).
It creates genuine connection instead of isolation by enabling local, human, peer-to-peer work.
It improves accessibility to an essential resource, flexible income, for students with different schedules, abilities, languages, and levels of digital confidence.

In short, SideQuest uses technology to strengthen the everyday blocks of student life rather than adding another barrier.

What it does

SideQuest is a task marketplace built for university students

SideQuest helps connect people who need work done with verified university students who can do it. Students sign up with a .edu.au email; anyone else can join to post work, but only verified students can accept student tasks.

Why SideQuest, not Airtasker or Fiverr?

Airtasker and Fiverr connect you with professionals and independent contractors which leads you to pay professional rates for it. A tradie, a freelance designer, or an experienced mover charges accordingly, and that's simply out of budget for 99% of the people: a student needing a logo for a club event, a shared house needing a one off deep clean, someone moving a single room of furniture. SideQuest fills that gap. Verified university students who are more than capable, available, and not running a business can do the same everyday tasks (cleaning, moving, tutoring, design, delivery, tech help) for meaningfully less, because they're not pricing in overheads, tools, or a professional margin. Posters get the job done affordably. Students get real paid work and experience. Everyone still gets paid properly unlike rest of the jobs in sydney the youth wage does not apply here, $40+ minimum per task. It's just priced for students doing student friendly work, not contractors running a trade.

(Feature-by-feature, why it beats Fiverr for this use case:)

Verified, student-only supply unlike Fiverr which is an open global marketplace anyone can accept. SideQuest verifies every tasker with a .edu.au email, so posters know exactly who they're hiring and why the pricing works.
Ask SideQuest through a Gemini-powered assistant, Fiverr has no real onboarding help. You're on your own browsing gigs. SideQuest has a Gemini-integrated chatbot built into the platform that explains how everything works and actively matches users to open tasks on request not a static FAQ, but a live assistant doing the searching for you.
Local, real-world tasks vs. gig-work catalog Fiverr is built for digital services (logos, voiceovers, code). SideQuest is built for in-person, local task. cleaning, moving, delivery, tutoring- the things students are actually positioned to do well and nearby.
Calendar-aware matching by Syncing Google Calendar, SideQuest only surfaces jobs that fit around class. Fiverr has no concept of a student's timetable.
Skills- and licence-based ranking, the Find Work feature ranks jobs against each student's actual skills and licences (e.g. a driver's licence surfaces more delivery/moving work), rather than a generic keyword search.
Equipment rental, Students can rent the gear a task needs (a steam mop, a trailer) instead of owning it, something no competitor offers, and something professionals building rates into their pricing to cover in the first place.
Compliance built in, not bolted on, The dashboard automatically tracks hours and earnings and enforces the 48-hour-per-fortnight cap for international student visa holders, so students don't have to self-police a legal requirement. Domestic students have no cap.
Dual ratings, Taskers and posters rate each other, Uber-style, so trust builds on both sides, closer to how gig-economy platforms actually work than Fiverr's one-directional review system.

Live demo: https://sidequest-eta-six.vercel.app

How we built it

Next.js 15 (App Router) and React 19, with TypeScript and Tailwind CSS. Supabase and Google Calendar are optional. The helper chat uses a Gemini API. The website is hosted on Vercel. With the help of AI (Anthropic) when we were stuck

Challenges we ran into

Making a full marketplace feel real (apply, hire, chat, ratings, gear) Student vs client rules: .edu.au to accept work, any email to post, plus visa hours that actually block applications.

Shipping a Gemini chat that recommends real open tasks, then rendering replies as proper links instead of raw markdown. Nested leftover code from an earlier clone broke production typecheck and we had to isolate it so Vercel would build.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully developed a working prototype of SideQuest, a student-focused platform designed to make flexible work more accessible, relevant and trustworthy.

The platform includes .edu.au university email verification to help confirm student identity, alongside an AI-powered job agent that filters and recommends opportunities based on each student’s skills, credentials, certifications and experience.

We also built a domestic and international student screening system that helps identify suitable work opportunities based on employment eligibility and relevant restrictions.

To improve trust and hiring quality, SideQuest includes a reputation system using completed jobs, portfolio work, employer reviews and ratings to help students build credibility over time.

The prototype also features AI-driven performance and platform metrics, allowing us to track hiring activity, ratings, engagement and job outcomes. Students can also access **earnings and tax estimation metrics, giving them greater visibility over how much they earn and their potential tax obligations.

Overall, we successfully created an end-to-end functional prototype, covering student verification, AI job discovery, eligibility screening, hiring, earnings tracking, reputation building and post-job reviews.

What we learned

Scope the marketplace around one user pain (rejection + no flexible student work), not every feature Airtasker has. Trust is the product: verification, ratings, hour caps, and honest “demo vs live payments.” AI is useful when it’s grounded in your listings and how-tos, not a generic chatbot. Shipping on Vercel forces you to treat env keys, typecheck, and nested folders as part of the product.

What's next for SideQuest by Kairos

Stripe AU so pay actually lands, still at or above minimum wage.
Verify Documents like Visa and Licenses with Security and Trust
AI + calendar, not just a filter. We’ll tie Gemini to the user’s Google Calendar and to what they’ve searched and applied for. If a new gig matches their skills, city, and preferences and sits in a free window (after class, not during a lecture), SideQuest will notify them the job that fits them best, at a time they can actually take it. Same idea for posters: when their brief lines up with a student who’s free and qualified, they get pinged instead of waiting on a pile of random applications.
Stronger licence-based recommendations and a fuller tax/hours export for returns.