StudyBuddy

Inspiration

Every student knows the feeling. You get the syllabus on day one, stare at a wall of topics, and have no idea where to start. We've both been there: cramming the night before, realizing we skipped entire units, spending more time planning to study than actually studying. We built StudyBuddy because students don't need more content. They need a clear path through the content they already have.

What it does

StudyBuddy takes your syllabus or lecture notes and turns them into a weekly study plan in seconds. Paste in your topics or upload your notes and the app breaks everything down into units, tasks, and quizzes built around your material. From there you check off tasks to earn XP, build daily streaks for bonus rewards, and take quizzes that unlock the next unit when you pass. A live sidebar tracks your level, streak, time studied, and how far through the course you are.

How we built it

We used Next.js 15 with TypeScript for the full app. The UI is built with Tailwind CSS v4 and shadcn/ui which gave us a clean component system we could move fast with. The XP, leveling, streaks, and quiz unlocking all run on the client side with a structured data model. We deployed to Vercel throughout the hackathon so we always had a live version to test.

Challenges we ran into

Making the gamification feel rewarding without feeling cheap took more iteration than we expected. Getting the XP curve, streaks, and quiz unlocking to all feel connected was tricky. Managing shared state across the dashboard, sidebar, unit cards, and quiz modal also got complex fast. On top of that, Tailwind v4 had breaking changes from v3 that caught us off guard and ate up some time early on.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We shipped a fully working product within the hackathon window. The quiz unlock flow and level up overlay genuinely feel satisfying to use. The codebase also stayed clean and modular the whole way through despite the time pressure. Most of all we built something we would actually use ourselves.

What we learned

We got a lot better at passing state cleanly across a deep component tree without needing a global store. We also learned how Tailwind v4 handles config differently and got sharper at cutting scope fast under pressure. The biggest takeaway was that a focused MVP beats an ambitious half-finished product every time.

What's next for StudyBuddy

Right now the app runs on sample data. The next step is connecting the Claude API so the study plan gets generated from whatever a student actually pastes or uploads. After that we want to add saved accounts so progress carries over between sessions, spaced repetition to bring back forgotten topics at the right time, and multiplayer study rooms with leaderboards. A mobile app is also on the roadmap.