Rally

Screenshot Parser
Events
Event Set Up
Calendar View

Inspiration: Gen Z now spends 9 hours daily on screens, while the average American clocks in at 7 hours. According to the American Psychological Association, this spike in screen time is directly linked to increased emotional and behavioral problems. We noticed a trend: our group chats were filled with screenshots of TikTok events and Instagram flyers that were never actually attended. People don’t lack ideas; they lack follow-through. We built Rally to bridge the gap between digital discovery and real-world connection.

How We Built It: Rally is a Progressive Web App (PWA) designed for seamless mobile use.

Frontend: We used React and Next.js with Tailwind CSS for a responsive, mobile-first UI.

Backend & Database: We integrated Supabase to handle our authentication and persistent storage of event data.

AI Engine: The core "magic" is powered by Google GenAI (@google/genai). When a user uploads a screenshot, the model parses the image to extract the event name, date, time, and location.

Challenges We Faced: Our biggest hurdle was the backend and database architecture. As a team primarily focused on frontend and design, we weren't familiar with managing a live database or handling server-side authentication. We spent significant time learning how to structure our tables in Supabase and ensuring that the data parsed by the AI was correctly mapped to user profiles without errors.

Additionally, deploying the project as a functional web app on Vercel presented its own set of trials. We had to navigate environment variable configurations for our API keys and ensure our PWA (Progressive Web App) settings were correctly recognized by mobile browsers so users could truly "install" Rally on their home screens.

What We Learned: Beyond the technical skills of using Next.js and Supabase, we learned the importance of "frictionless" UX. By automating the tedious task of manual calendar entries through AI, we saw how technology can actually be used to pull people away from their phones and into the real world. We also gained a much deeper understanding of how to bridge the gap between a local development environment and a fully deployed cloud application.

Built With: Frontend: React, Next.js, Tailwind CSS

Backend & Auth: Supabase

AI: Google GenAI (Gemini)

Deployment: Vercel

Mobile: PWA (Progressive Web App)