neighborly

Inspiration

A pothole goes unnoticed. A streetlight stays broken. A resident needs help but doesn't know whom to ask. Community events happen without everyone knowing about them.

Many neighborhood problems are not caused by a lack of people willing to help, but by a lack of communication, coordination, and visibility.

We created Neighborly to bring people and their communities closer together through one simple platform where residents can share information, report local problems, discover events, and work together to make their neighborhoods better.

What it does

Neighborly is an AI-powered community platform that connects residents with their neighborhood and helps turn local concerns into actionable, trackable issues.

Key features include:

• Community Hub: A shared feed where residents can request help, offer resources, share announcements, and discuss local matters.
• AI-Powered Civic Reporter: Residents can report potholes, garbage problems, broken streetlights, and other civic issues, with AI-assisted categorization and severity analysis.
• Location Intelligence: A map-based interface helps residents explore reported issues, community events, and neighborhood safety alerts.
• Neighborhood Watch: Residents can share relevant safety alerts and keep up with local developments.
• Community Calendar: Discover local events, join activities, and participate in neighborhood initiatives.
• AI Guide:An intelligent assistant that helps users navigate the platform and find community-related information.
• Trust and Participation:A reputation system encourages helpful contributions, while notifications keep residents informed about updates.

How we built it

Neighborly is designed as a modular, full-stack web application with a responsive interface for desktop and mobile users.

Our planned technology stack includes:

• Next.js and React: Application structure and user interface.
• TypeScript: Type safety and maintainable code.
• Tailwind CSS:Responsive styling and a consistent design system.
• Supabase: Authentication, PostgreSQL database, and real-time capabilities.
• Google Gemini:AI-assisted civic report analysis, community content categorization, and conversational guidance.
• Leaflet and OpenStreetMap: Interactive neighborhood maps and location-based reporting.
• Progressive Web App (PWA):An installable, mobile-friendly experience.

The architecture is modular so that individual services can be improved without redesigning the entire platform.

Challenges we faced

Building a community platform involves more than creating a social feed. We needed to think about how different features work together, how civic issues can be tracked through their lifecycle, and how AI can assist without making unreliable decisions.

Our main engineering challenges include integrating AI into user workflows, connecting reports to locations, designing clear report statuses, handling potentially harmful community content, and maintaining a consistent experience across devices.

Our approach is to use structured data, validation, transparent status updates, and human review when AI moderation is uncertain.

Accomplishments we're proud of

Neighborly brings community discussions, civic reporting, location intelligence, safety alerts, events, and AI assistance into one product concept.

Instead of treating each neighborhood activity as a separate tool, we designed a connected experience in which residents can discover problems, contribute useful information, and follow progress.

Our focus is on making civic participation approachable for everyday residents, not just technical users.

What we learned

This project helped us explore how AI can support real-world community workflows rather than simply answer questions.

We also learned the importance of designing for trust, building accessible interfaces, validating user-generated content, and connecting frontend experiences to meaningful backend workflows.

What's next for Neighborly?

Our roadmap includes:

• Smarter Location Intelligence: Improved map filtering, nearby issue discovery, and location-based alerts.
• Advanced AI Moderation: Better spam detection, duplicate issue identification, and moderator assistance.
• Community Reputation: More transparent ways to recognize helpful residents and verified contributions.
• Mobile and Offline Support: Improved PWA capabilities and reliable access on mobile devices.
• Civic Authority Integration: Exploring workflows for forwarding reports to the relevant municipal departments and tracking official resolution.
• Community Analytics: Insights into recurring issues, response times, and participation.

Our long-term vision is to make Neighborly a trusted digital space where residents can communicate, collaborate, and create measurable positive change in their communities.

Built With

• next.js
• react
• tailwind
• typescript