About Pathlight

Inspiration

Opportunities are everywhere, but discovering the right one is often harder than applying for it. Scholarships, hackathons, competitions, fellowships, research programs, internships, exchanges, and other opportunities are scattered across different websites and usually require people to search using terms they may not even know.

We wanted to build something different: instead of making people already know what opportunity to search for, Pathlight helps them discover opportunities they didn't know existed. Pathlight is designed for people 15+ around the world, regardless of major or field. It can also support people who are undecided, have no specific major, or are looking for opportunities based on goals and skills rather than their academic field.

What Pathlight Does

A user creates a profile with information such as age, country, education, field, skills, experience, budget, preferred modality, and goals.

Pathlight then evaluates opportunities using a deterministic eligibility engine and produces transparent match results. Instead of simply showing a percentage, the system explains why an opportunity matches, which requirements are satisfied, and where potential eligibility issues exist.

The platform also has a goal-aware discovery system. For example, someone searching for scholarships may discover research fellowships, competitions, exchanges, conferences, or other opportunities that could help them achieve the same underlying goal.

This is the core idea behind You didn't know these existed.

How We Built It

Pathlight was built as a web application using a structured opportunity data model and a client-side matching architecture.

The current application includes:

• A normalized opportunity schema
• Deterministic eligibility evaluation
• Transparent match scoring and breakdowns
• Goal-aware cross-category discovery
• Profile management
• Search, filtering, and sorting
• Funding and deadline filters
• Saved opportunities with local persistence
• Opportunity deduplication logic
• A source/connector registry
• JSON opportunity import and export
• Responsive desktop, tablet, and mobile interfaces

The matching system evaluates factors including eligibility, academic level, field or skill fit, goals, funding needs, location, and modality.

We also designed the source architecture so that future approved connectors can feed verified opportunity records into the same normalized system rather than creating separate databases for every source.

What We Learned

One of our biggest lessons was that building an opportunity platform is not simply a search problem. Eligibility, transparency, data normalization, duplication, deadlines, funding, and source verification all matter.

We also learned that personalization should not become a black box. A user should be able to understand why something was recommended instead of receiving an unexplained score. Another important lesson was designing for a broad audience. Pathlight is not intended to be a psychology platform or a scholarship-only platform. The architecture is designed around people, goals, skills, eligibility, and opportunities, allowing the same system to work across different majors, fields, countries, and types of users.

Challenges

The biggest challenge was creating a useful opportunity-discovery experience while being honest about what is currently live. The current version contains a functional opportunity engine and connector architecture, but automated global source synchronization is not yet active. Therefore, prototype records are clearly identified rather than being presented as live verified opportunities.

Another challenge was making the matching system useful without relying on arbitrary recommendations. We addressed this by using deterministic eligibility checks and an inspectable scoring breakdown.

Why Pathlight Matters

Pathlight's goal is not simply to provide another list of opportunities.

It is to help people answer a harder question: What opportunities are out there that I could realistically pursue, but don't even know exist?

By combining structured opportunity data, eligibility reasoning, personalization, and goal-aware discovery, Pathlight aims to turn opportunity discovery from a fragmented search process into a more accessible and understandable experience.

Inspiration

What it does

How we built it

Challenges we ran into

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

What's next for Pathlight

Built With

• ai
• application
• artificial
• discovery
• education
• eligibility
• for
• good
• intelligence
• learning
• machine
• matching
• opportunity
• personalization
• react
• recommendation
• system
• typescript
• web