Inspiration

As a student, I kept running into the same frustrating problem — tools like Microsoft Word and Excel exist for free online, but they're incomplete without stable wifi, and nobody tells you which free alternative actually covers the feature you need. Add expensive transport and overpriced courses to the mix, and student life gets costly fast.

I wanted to build something that didn't just list free tools — but actually understood what you were trying to do and told you exactly how to do it for free.

What I Built

ToolMate is a student survival platform powered by AI. You type any problem in plain English — like "I need to make a presentation with animations" or "I need a cheap way to get to the airport" — and ToolMate finds the best free solution for your exact situation.

Key features:

• 🔍 AI Search — task-first search that understands what you actually need
• 🖥️ Software & Tools — free alternatives with honest feature comparisons and offline/wifi notes
• 🚌 Transport — cheapest student transport options by city with student discounts
• 🎓 Courses & Certs — free certifications that actually matter
• 💸 How Broke Am I? — enter your budget, get personalised free recommendations
• 🏆 Savings Leaderboard — track and rank how much money you've saved globally

⚙️ How I Built It

I built ToolMate entirely using MeDo, describing each feature and page in plain English through the dialogue interface. I used MeDo's backend management system to handle the community tips and leaderboard data, and deployed it with one click to get a live public URL.

This was my first ever hackathon — and MeDo made it possible to go from idea to a deployed app.

🚧 Challenges

The biggest challenge was narrowing down the idea. I started with a vague frustration about student expenses and had to keep asking "what's the real problem here?" until I landed on something specific and useful.

Getting the AI search to feel genuinely helpful — not just a list of links — was also something I had to iterate on multiple times with MeDo.

📚 What I Learned

• How to turn a personal frustration into a product idea
• How to structure an app before building it
• That no-code tools like MeDo are genuinely powerful for prototyping
• That the best ideas come from real problems, not brainstorming sessions

Built With

• medo