Katalyst
Every Commit Counts
The problem Katalyst solves
💡 What You Can Use It For
Our platform helps developers, organizers, and communities simplify how they host, join, and measure hackathons or open-source contribution drives — all in one connected ecosystem.
🧑💻 For Developers
- 🚀 Build your portfolio automatically — your commits, PRs, and event participation are tracked and visualized beautifully.
- 🤖 Get AI-powered summaries of your projects, so anyone can instantly understand your impact.
- ⚡ Maintain streaks & XP through gamified contribution tracking and performance analytics.
- 🧭 Find teammates and mentors based on real contribution data and compatibility.
- 🌍 Grow your visibility in the open-source and hackathon ecosystem — beyond your resume.
🏫 For Hackathon Organizers & Colleges
- 🧩 Host hackathons effortlessly — manage registration, judging, and submissions from a single dashboard.
- 🧠 Automatic judging & project summaries powered by AI to save hours of manual evaluation.
- 📊 Real-time analytics for participant activity, and contribution tracking.
- 🎨 Custom branding & sponsor visibility integrated into the event interface.
- ☁ All-in-one infrastructure — no need for multiple tools or custom setup.
🤝 For Tech Communities & Companies
- 🌟 Run branded open-source drives (e.g., “AI-for-Good Week” or “Code for Sustainability”).
- 🔍 Identify top contributors through real data on commits, pull requests, and collaboration.
- 🪪 Issue digital badges & certificates verified by contribution history.
- 💼 Recruit with confidence — find talent based on real code impact, not just resumes.
- 🧩 Engage your community with challenges, leaderboards, and gamified rewards.
✨ Empowering developers, organizers, and communities to build, connect, and grow — one commit at a time.
Challenges we ran into
🧩 Key Challenges & Learnings
1. Real-time GitHub Commit Syncing
Issue: Delay in fetching new commits due to GitHub API rate limits.
Solution: Integrated GitHub Webhooks + Supabase Potgre function to fetch incremental updates and enable live commit visualization.
2. AI Commit Summaries
Issue: Initial summaries lacked context for multi-file commits.
Solution: Built a commit context pre-processor that analyzes file diffs and commit messages before sending them to the AI model — improving summary quality.
3. OAuth Authentication Flow
Issue: Handling multiple tokens and revoked permissions caused authentication errors.
Solution: Added a secure token refresh and error listener system, ensuring seamless re-authentication.
4. Contribution Streak Scaling
Issue: Performance bottlenecks while maintaining thousands of active streaks.
Solution: We will Implement cached pre-computed streaks using Supabase + Redis, enabling real-time tracking with minimal load.
🔧 Tech Stack
| Category | Technologies |
|---|---|
| Frontend | Vite, React, TailwindCSS |
| Backend | Django, Pyhton |
| Database | PostgreSQL |
| AI Layer | Ollama/ GEMINI |
| Integrations | GitHub API, Webhooks |
| Caching & Performance | Redis, Edge Functions |
🌍 Our New Direction
After evaluating sustainability and privacy, we’ve shifted focus to *open-source collaboration, **hackathon ecosystems, and *high-commit strike events — empowering community-driven innovation over closed systems.
This move strengthens our mission to stay transparent, accessible, and impactful for developers worldwide.
Tracks Applied (1)
Best Use of Gemini API
Major League Hacking
Technologies used