We will be undergoing planned maintenance on January 16th, 2026 at 1:00pm UTC. Please make sure to save your work.

Hack-o-Taco

A friendly non-edible taco of your handy hackathon tools 🌮

Comment 1

logo

💡 Inspiration 💡

We all know how much of a hassle it can become to fill out tiny details for submitting a project. Though any project in a hackathon should have well written code, the member details, descriptions, correct submission of data are just as important as the project. Through our experiences in various hackathons, we faced a lot of pain points like:

  • Participating in numerous hackathons exposed us to various challenges, such as incomplete submission forms and forgetting essential information like Discord IDs. Simultaneous project description edits and lost progress hindered efficient teamwork and collaboration among team members. Keeping track of project progress through commits on the repository was time-consuming and required a more intuitive visualization method.

  • Traditional markdown editors lacked real-time rendering, making it difficult to see the project description's final appearance and impacting collaboration. Not only that, but constantly having to interrupt members to ask whether the editor is open on their end, which, if not done, makes you lose progress of the edits.

  • Hackathons can be overwhelming for both beginners and experienced hackers, leading to difficulties in finding and accessing the right educational resources for skill enhancement. There has also been times when we need to brush up the absolute basics, and we were too lost on what to get on to when learning.

Additionally,

  • Unintuitive team tracking and member information being a chaotic mess while submitting the hackathon also has accounted for times of unproductivity. Pinging members to get their email/college name, entering the email-id wrong or completely forgetting that the team members hasn't joined the project yet 🫠

  • With these pain points in mind, Hack-o-Tacko aims to address these challenges and create a seamless and enjoyable hackathon experience for all participants. 🌮🎉

🦾 What it does 🦾

User Data

  • Input your details so that you can join projects and collaborate with ease
  • Streamlit made it easier to take in inputs with ready to use components on the go
  • This data is later used to make the submissions of the project easier

Emergency MD Editor

  • Jot down the temporary descriptions and last minute changes you want to make to the actual README
  • Thanks to Streamlit, it supports real-time markdown rendering on the side, removing the hassle to constantly leave the editor to see the preview
  • The implementation of the renderer was done with just a few lines of code, all due to Streamlit

Mentor

  • Finding someone to mentor can be challenging, so we decided to integrate them into our platform
  • With Streamlit we were able to embed links to the mentors seamlessly along with chat functionalities to get started
  • Find a mentor by browsing through the available ones, checkout their GitHub and initiate conversations on the go!

Educational Resources

  • It's normal to feel lost on how to get started or feeling helpless when not knowing what to get on to for learning something new
  • brush up your basics with video and site tutorials through resources provided
  • Play videos on the site without redirect, thanks to Streamlit
  • Due to Streamlit, we were able to embed important links to site tutorials and videos

View

  • view your progress via GitHub repositories commits of your hackathon project against time
  • With Streamlit we were able to plot graphs to visualize the data over time
  • Gives an intuitve idea about how far the progress has happened, at what rate it is happening

Teams sections alert ⚠️

Create

  • create a team on the fly, get a unique team ID to let others join
  • share your unique ID to let others in
  • with Streamlit, integration of these functionalities was extremely easy

Join

  • Want to join your team? get the ID and join in
  • Start onboarding with teams with zero hassle
  • Get your team member details in one go
  • with Streamlit powering our application, you get all the data in one place

List

  • See the projects that you have been part of
  • when clicked it shows all the details of the projects
  • aesthetic UI thanks to Streamlit components

Project

  • View the member details, project description section-specific editors and more!
  • The section wise editor implemented through Streamlit ensures there is no conflict when multiple members are editing the project description
  • Chat with your teammembers on the go with Streamlit

🛠️ How we built it 🛠️

We powered Hack-o-Tacko using Streamlit, and it played a vital role throughout our development journey! Streamlit's ease of use and robust features made the process smooth and enjoyable. Here's how Streamlit helped us:

🚀 Rapid Deployment:

With Streamlit, deploying our web app was a breeze. It streamlined the deployment process, allowing us to share our progress with the world quickly.

💻 User-Friendly Components:

Streamlit's built-in UI components saved us time and effort. We easily integrated widgets like sliders, buttons, and text inputs, making the front-end development less daunting.

⚡ Faster Feature Implementation:

Streamlit's simplicity enabled us to ship out features faster. We didn't get bogged down in complex front-end code, allowing us to focus more on building the core functionality.

🎨 Beautiful Front-end:

Streamlit handled the front-end gracefully, providing a polished and visually appealing look without the need for extensive CSS styling.

🛠️ Third-party Components:

Streamlit's vibrant community offered third-party components, making development even more efficient. These components, created by other awesome hackers, saved us time on coding complex logic and helped us bring our ideas into production swiftly.

In conclusion, Streamlit was the backbone of Hack-o-Tacko's development, empowering us to create an intuitive and user-friendly hackathon companion 🌮

🏁 Challenges we ran into 🏁

  • Echart component for streamlit has a bug with the latest version of streamlit for datetime and timeline graphs, so the graphs on the view page wasn't loading at times.

  • At times streamlit would not render real time the changes, but we were still able to make our project much quicker

  • There were quite a few restrictions with the use of components provided by streamlit, like not being able to wrap an expander over other expanders and other customisablitiy restrictions

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of 🏆

  • User-Centric Tool: Creating a tool that genuinely enhances the hackathon experience for participants, despite being new to Streamlit, we were able to make a fully functional project with ease.

  • Fun-filled Journey: Successfully completing the hackathon and having a blast throughout the development process made it all worthwhile

  • Smooth Collaboration: Overcoming challenges with project description editing resulted in seamless teamwork, we were able to make something that would have an extensive use

  • Empowering Learning: Providing personalized educational resources to boost participants' hacking skills

  • Data Visualization Magic: We are thrilled with the way Streamlit enabled us to create data visualizations

  • Rapid Feature Development: Implementing features faster with Streamlit allowed us to deliver a user-friendly tool in record time

📝 What we learned 📝

  • Streamlit Integration: Streamlit proved to be a lifesaver for rapid prototyping and creating powerful web apps with minimal effort

  • The Power of Teamwork: Working together as a team and supporting each other with endless cups of coffee boosted our productivity

  • User-Centered Design: Building a tool that caters to users' needs is the key to creating an impactful product that people love

  • Continuous Learning: Embracing new technologies and staying open to learning throughout the journey is essential for building innovative solutions

🔮 What's next for Hack-o-Tacko 🔮

Hack-o-Tacko Revolution: Our ultimate goal is to make Hack-o-Tacko the go-to tool for hackathon hackers everywhere! We want to revolutionize the hackathon experience, making it even more enjoyable and productive for all participants. Our future scope includes live collaboration with stats additional to GitHub commits, possible real-time coding. Integration of Badges and leaderboards to increase healthy competition and much more!

Built With

+ 1 more
Share this project:

Updates