BenchPilot

Inspiration

All of us have had some microbiological research experience, and all of us have had to deal with experiments involving bacteria, fume hoods, and biosafety cabinets where, to prevent contamination, we have been limited in our ability to take notes and reference protocols.

What it does

We made a webapp that serves as an AI based research journal and protocol tool specializing in voice command based utility, allowing the user to take notes, set timers, and navigate protocols without the need to touch their device.

How we built it

We used a combination of Google Stitch and Claude Code to design much of the UI, while using Devin and Claude Code to create the backend. The frontend and backend were stitched together, again with a combination of Devin and Claude Code, with Codex as a reviewer for Claude's plans.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenges we ran into were in adding functionality to Google Stitch, it produced a static page with non-interactable elements. As such many elements that were meant to be interactable ended up as placeholders that would complicate the process of merging the frontend and backend. We also struggled with parsing intent from the (sometimes unclear) Deepgram output, so we had to include bias for keywords, router guards, and step-aware answers to the LLM call.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This was the first hackathon any of us had participated, and we are quite proud of what was produced within the 24 hours. It has more functionality than any of us expected it to have, and in addition, we felt the user interface turned out quite well.

What we learned

We learned how to prompt and integrate LLMs into various applications. We further learned how API keys functioned, and how to separate them from the git repo to keep them private.

What's next for BenchPilot

Additional functionality needs to be added. Method exportation, reagent QR code scanning and logging, improve accuracy of time estimates, and improved PDF reading.