MindSpace

Inspiration

I've done a lot of research throughout high school and college, and noticed that my biggest roadblock is always the mapping out of ideas. I never know where to start, and even after I start, I often find myself lost and confused within the plethora of tabs I have open. That's why we wanted a place to store all of our ideas and maybe even a little helper to generate them.

What it does

MindSpace is an AI-powered mind mapping web application that transforms complex topics into structured research frameworks. Users input a main idea, and our AI generates three focused subtopics. For each subtopic, users can refine the content and generate credible academic sources with proper citations. The platform includes user authentication, email confirmation, and a clean interface that guides users from broad concepts to specific, source-backed research areas in minutes rather than hours.

How we built it

We built MindSpace using Flask as our web framework with SQLAlchemy for database management and Flask-Login for user authentication. The frontend uses HTML templates with CSS styling for a clean and responsive interface. We used custom AI agents for topic generation and finding sources, implemented secure user registration with email confirmation using Flask-Mail and token-based verification, and used Flask-WTF for form handling with CSRF protection. The application has separate modules for authentication, main functionality, and database models.

Challenges we ran into

Initially, we had several ideas for this project, but solutions for most of them already existed. Once we decided on our project and framework, each of us needed to learn new skills practically from the ground up, including HTML, API calls and how to create a secure account database.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we built this project using strategies most of us had very little experience with, and yet we were able to work as an effective team to build a complete product.

What we learned

We gained a lot of experience with how to create and run a Flask app and blueprint organization. We learned how to integrate AI APIs effectively into web applications and handle form validation with Flask-WTF. Working with SQLAlchemy taught us about database relationships and migrations. We also learned about implementing secure authentication flows, email confirmation systems, and proper error handling in web applications.

What's next for MindSpace

We want MindSpace to be a place where users can expand their horizons and create truly unique projects, so the next steps for MindSpace are to let users customize the number of subtopics and sources generated by the AI agent. On top of that, we know projects aren't (usually) a one-sitting task, so we wanted to add a feature to save and resume your work later. Finally, just like space, projects can be an expansive and lonely place where collaborative exploration is helpful, so we wanted to implement a share feature for multiple people to view and edit a mindspace at the same time.