Ship Ready

What it does: ShipReady is an AI pitch coach built for the hackathon stage. You describe your project and it generates a structured 60-second pitch using a proven 7-part framework. It then teaches you why every section works, trains you with timed practice slides, prepares you for judge questions with scored feedback, and shows your critical weaknesses before you walk on stage.How we built it: Built in one day using React, Tailwind CSS, and the Claude API. The core insight was using Claude not just as a text generator but as a structured coach — with a custom system prompt built around the Oregon AI Accelerator pitch framework. The onboarding collects project context through 5 story-driven questions, which feeds into every feature: pitch generation, teaching annotations, judge prep, and weakness analysis. Challenges we ran into: Making the AI output feel specific rather than generic was the hardest part. Generic pitch advice is useless. We had to engineer the prompts carefully so every output felt personal to the user's actual project. Also building the practice carousel with auto-advancing timer and the judge scoring system in a single day was a real constraint to work within.Accomplishments we're proud of: The Pitch Guide teaching feature — where the AI explains why each section of your pitch works and gives you one tip to improve it. It turns ShipReady from a generator into a real learning tool. Also the Weakness Report which gives brutally honest feedback across 5 categories with scores.What we learned: The best AI products aren't the ones that do the most — they're the ones that solve one real pain point better than anything else. Every hacker in that room today felt the pain ShipReady solves. Building for a problem you've personally experienced makes everything sharper.

What's next for ShipReady: Expanding beyond hackathons to job interviews, investor pitches, and grant applications. The pitch intelligence framework works for anyone who needs to communicate their idea clearly under pressure. Next: voice delivery coaching, team collaboration features, and a pitch score that improves with every practice session.

Built With

• claude-api-(anthropic)
• react
• tailwind-css
• vite