VA Rating Assistant - Bolt.new

VA Rating Assistant: Upload medical docs & our AI scanner identifies potential VA disability claims & ratings. Get the benefits you deserve, faster & more accurately.

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About the Project: VA Rating Assistant - Built with Bolt.new 🚀

🎯 Inspiration

As an active-duty Navy Chief and passionate advocate for veterans' welfare, I was driven to create VA Rating Assistant after hearing countless stories from veterans struggling with the confusing and frustrating VA disability claims process.

I wanted to build a tool that was fast, intuitive, and user-friendly, and Bolt.new was the perfect platform to bring that vision to life. Its speed of development, modern component-based architecture, and tight React + TypeScript support allowed me to focus on delivering value for veterans—without getting bogged down in boilerplate setup.

📚 What I Learned Using Bolt.new

  • How Bolt.new’s instant deployment and preview system accelerates rapid prototyping and user testing.
  • How Bolt’s built-in TypeScript and React support makes developing complex frontend flows feel simple and efficient.
  • How to leverage Bolt's flexibility to integrate external AWS services (like Textract and Bedrock) while keeping all user interactions and frontend logic entirely within the Bolt app.
  • The importance of accessibility and veteran-focused UX/UI in designing tools for diverse audiences with varying tech comfort levels.

🛠️ How I Built It Using Bolt.new

Frontend Development (Bolt.new as the Primary Platform):

  • The entire frontend interface was built inside Bolt.new, using React + TypeScript.
  • Bolt’s instant build previews let me iterate fast on page layouts, upload flows, and condition display components.

  • I used Bolt’s built-in routing and state management patterns to create a clean, multi-step experience for veterans to:

    • Upload medical documents
    • View estimated disability ratings
    • Download pre-filled VA forms
    • Interact with the AI-powered rating assistant

  • The deployed frontend includes the “Built with Bolt.new” badge, proudly displayed to meet submission requirements.

Backend Development (Minimal External Use - AWS Stack Only for API Support):

While Bolt was my primary development environment, the project connects to a lightweight backend stack for serverless processing and AI document analysis:

AWS Service Purpose
AWS Lambda Processes API requests from Bolt (document uploads, AI analysis triggers)
Amazon API Gateway Acts as the public-facing endpoint for Bolt’s API calls
Amazon S3 Secure storage for veteran-uploaded documents
Amazon Textract OCR to extract text and medical data from uploads
Amazon Bedrock + Bedrock Agent Runs AI and RAG workflows for condition detection
Amazon SQS / SNS Manages async event handling for larger document jobs
Amazon Supabase (Powered by AWS) Manages user authentication flows from the Bolt frontend
AWS X-Ray Provides monitoring and distributed tracing

Database:

  • Used Supabase (Postgres) purely as an external database service to store:
    • User accounts
    • Document metadata
    • AI analysis results

Bolt handles all data-fetching and user state logic, communicating with Supabase and AWS services via secured API calls.

🚧 Challenges Solved with Bolt.new

  1. Rapid UI Prototyping:
    Bolt allowed me to rapidly build and deploy new UI components as I tested different user flows with veterans.

  2. Live Iteration on Frontend State:
    Using Bolt’s built-in dev server and instant previews, I was able to iterate on upload forms, progress indicators, and condition result cards in real-time.

  3. Scalable API Integration:
    I used **Bolt's to connect with AWS Lambda functions and external services—keeping all business logic cleanly separated from the frontend UI.

  4. Fast Deployment:
    Deploying directly from Bolt to Github saved hours typically spent setting up CI/CD pipelines for frontend hosting.

🏅 Accomplishments I'm Proud Of (Built Primarily in Bolt)

  • Developed a fully functional, production-ready veteran-facing web app—from landing page to dashboard—entirely inside Bolt.new.
  • Delivered real-time AI-powered VA disability rating estimates with a seamless Bolt frontend experience.
  • Built a mobile-responsive, accessible UI optimized for veterans across devices.
  • Maintained all user flows, data entry, and UI rendering entirely inside Bolt, with external AWS services used strictly for backend processing.

🚀 What's Next for VA Rating Assistant (Continuing Development in Bolt.new)

  • Production Launch:
    Launch at https://www.varatingassistant.com, with the Bolt-built frontend as the core user experience.

  • Deeper VA API Integrations:
    Add real-time VA.gov API calls directly from Bolt to pull live user service history and claims data.

  • AI-Driven Form Autofill:
    Let veterans download pre-filled VA disability forms (like 21-526EZ) generated from AI-analyzed data.

  • Mobile Experience Enhancements:
    Continue optimizing the Bolt frontend for responsive performance across all screen sizes.

  • Premium Features Rollout:
    Launch new paid tier features fully integrated into the Bolt UI, including:

    • AI Appeals Helper
    • VA Form Autofill
    • VA CFR Citation Mapping

  • Ongoing UI Iterations:
    Stay inside Bolt.new for all future frontend iterations, including styling, state management, and UX improvements.

Visit my website to experience how Bolt.new + AI + AWS come together to help veterans navigate the VA disability claims process with clarity, speed, and confidence.

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