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🏙️ About the Project — Settlerr 🌆 💡 Inspiration

Moving to a new city like Calgary can be exciting but overwhelming. Newcomers — students, workers, and migrants — often struggle with finding local events, navigating essential onboarding tasks, and settling into a new environment. We wanted to make that journey easier. Settlerr was inspired by the idea of creating a digital companion that helps newcomers explore, learn, and integrate into their new city through guided experiences and personalized tasks.

🧠 What We Learned

Through Settlerr, we learned how to build a full-stack web application that combines modern development with scalable cloud integration.

Connected a FastAPI backend to AWS DynamoDB for fast, schema-flexible data storage.

Integrated AWS S3 for managing media like profile and event images.

Implemented client-side AI using face-api.js for private, on-device face verification.

Designed interest-based user grouping and personalized recommendations.

🏗️ How We Built It Layer Technology Purpose Frontend ReactJS Single-page web app for events and onboarding tasks Backend FastAPI (Python) Handles all API endpoints, authentication, and logic Database AWS DynamoDB Stores users, events, and task progress Storage AWS S3 Stores profile and event images Authentication Custom FastAPI Auth Lightweight, token-based authentication AI face-api.js In-browser face verification for task completion 🚧 Challenges We Faced

Implementing secure authentication without managed identity services.

Ensuring smooth integration between FastAPI, DynamoDB, and S3.

Handling image uploads and retrievals efficiently within limited time.

Managing client-side AI performance for real-time verification.

Balancing frontend design and backend scalability during the hackathon.

🌍 Impact

Settlerr empowers newcomers to Calgary to settle in faster and smarter. It simplifies city onboarding, helps users discover local opportunities, and provides personalized guidance — transforming the challenge of relocation into a guided, user-friendly experience.