Simba

Inspiration

Having worked at leading tech companies like Google and Snowflake, we experienced firsthand how difficult it is for managers to stay up-to-date with engineering progress between team meetings and pull requests. Managers often resort to messaging engineers via Slack or email, trying to check on project status—something engineers may delay responding to due to time constraints or focus interruptions. There had to be a better way to stay in the loop, without increasing the overhead for engineers.

What it does

Our MCP server bridges the gap between real-time developer activity and project tracking tools. It connects with engineers' workstations and integrates seamlessly with note-taking tools like Notion. By analyzing local, unpublished commits, the MCP server can infer progress and align it with the TODOs assigned by managers. As developers continue to make commits, the server updates meeting notes in tools like Notion—tracking what’s been done, what remains, and estimating overall progress—automatically and continuously.

How we built it

We developed a VS Code extension that gives engineers the flexibility to push local commit data to the MCP server. The server parses these commits, interprets the changes in context, and updates the corresponding Notion documentation in real-time. This creates a lightweight, near-automatic status reporting mechanism.

Challenges we ran into

Integrating Notion’s API smoothly with our MCP server posed challenges

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built a tool that fills a crucial productivity gap for managers and engineers alike. Instead of relying on pull requests as the sole source of progress tracking, we tapped into a previously underutilized source: local commits.