VolunteerManiac

Inspiration

As someone who loves volunteering, I would like to find more opportunities with different choices so I can volunteer and meet new people. Thus, I built VolunteerManiac. The website has different options for volunteering such as in person or virtual volunteer activities. People can also filter based on volunteer purpose to find the volunteering opportunities that they like.

What it does

Users can input the city and country where they live and a "search" button for them to click search and find volunteer opportunities in the area. There are different filters for volunteer opportunities based on causes such as human rights, animals, arts & cultures, children & youth, Technology, Education, Health & medicine, Disaster Assistance, Employment, Environment, Homelessness, Hunger, etc.There are options for in person or virtual volunteer opportunities.

How we built it

We built using Kiro spec-to-code approach and agent hooks to streamline and fasten the development process

Using Kiro’s Spec-to-Code Approach

I began by laying out three key pillars of the specification:

• Goal: Create a volunteer matching website that connects people with opportunities and empowers them to achieve their volunteering aspirations.
• Scope: Include a search box for city and country, a clear “Search” button, and filters for causes and opportunity type (in-person vs. virtual). -nRequirements: Ensure search results display essential details such as the opportunity title, organization, cause, location (or virtual), a short description, and a link to apply. Once I gave this specification to Kiro, it didn’t just stop at understanding the requirements. Kiro expanded my notes into a full outline that included detailed requirements, design considerations, and a structured list of implementation tasks. This shifted my role from being the person who had to architect everything from scratch to someone who simply needed to review the plan, make adjustments, and run the generated tasks.

Smoother Development with Kiro Agent Hooks

What made the experience even more powerful was Kiro’s agent hooks. These hooks acted like smart automations embedded into my development workflow, taking care of repetitive tasks without me needing to intervene. Here are a few examples of how they worked for me:

• Whenever I saved a file, Kiro automatically ran linting and formatting routines.
• When I deleted a file, any associated cleanup was triggered immediately.
• Each time I created a new file, Kiro generated the corresponding documentation updates or test stubs automatically. This meant I no longer had to constantly switch contexts to handle small but necessary tasks. My development cycle became smoother and faster, my code quality stayed consistent, and team processes were standardized right from the start.

Challenges we ran into

We had challenge to define the tasks and make the meaningful prompts to make the code work

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to build a beautiful site for volunteer

What we learned

We learnt to use different functions of Kiro and built new apps

What's next for VolunteerManiac

• Smart Search Enhancements: Autocomplete for city/country, Location detection (geolocation), Better Filtering Options, Time commitment (e.g., <5 hours/week, one-time, long-term), Skills required vs. no skills needed.
• Save & Share: Bookmark opportunities, Share via social media/email.

Built With

• agent-hook
• kiro
• spec-to-code