PackPal

Landing Page
Dashboard
Your Trips
Friends
Chatbot w/Gemini
Your Trip List w/AI Generated Items

Inspiration

Packing for trips, whether that’s an international flight or a night out at a bar gets messy fast. People overpack, forget essentials, and duplicate items across the group. We wanted a simple, social tool that keeps everyone on the same page and avoids overlap.

What it does

PackPal.fit is a smart packing assistant that helps users organize, save, and manage packing lists for all types of trips. Users can create new trips, add or remove items, and view them through a clean dashboard with side navigation. A built-in Gemini 2.5 chatbot makes packing smarter you can type natural prompts like “I’m going on a 3-day ski trip” and it suggests what to bring. Everything is hosted under our custom GoDaddy domain (PackPal.fit) for a seamless and travel-friendly experience.

How we built it

We’re proud to have built a complete, full-stack travel-planning app in under 24 hours that actually solves a real-world problem. We implemented trip creation, saving, editing, and deletion; made list sharing possible; integrated Gemini 2.5 AI for smart suggestions; and deployed under our GoDaddy domain. The interface feels smooth, modern, and genuinely helpful for any traveler.

Challenges we ran into

One of the main challenges we faced was getting authentication to work smoothly while keeping the login and registration flow simple for users. We also ran into issues while setting up chatting with other users.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud to have built a fully functional, full-stack web app in under 24 hours that actually makes trip planning easier. We integrated Gemini 2.5 into our chatbot to generate real-time packing suggestions, hosted our project on a GoDaddy domain, and created a polished, responsive UI that feels ready for real use.

What we learned

We learned a lot about industry-standard development practices, including version control with GitHub and team collaboration through branches and merges. We also gained experience integrating AI APIs like Google Gemini, which helped us understand how to connect machine learning models to real-world apps. Overall, this hackathon taught us how to combine design, teamwork, and technical implementation to bring an idea to life under time pressure.

What's next for PackPal.fit

Next, we plan to introduce real-time collaboration, so users can see each other’s updates instantly. We also want to add in-app and email reminders for un-packed items, implement email-based authentication, and make access control smarter so users can assign who’s bringing what. Additionally, we’ll improve mobile support, refine our friend-sharing system, and enhance our Gemini 2.5 integration for personalized suggestions that adapt to weather and destination.