TigerTrail

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Inspiration

RIT is a massive, incredibly diverse campus filled with some of the smartest engineers, artists, and researchers in the country. But right now, we operate in silos. If a student is having a panic attack at 2:00 AM over a memory leak in their code, or needs 20 participants for their psychology capstone, or just has a flat bike tire, they are completely isolated.

The tragic irony of the RIT student experience is that the exact person who could solve your problem is probably sitting three doors down in your dorm, but you have no safe, campus-sanctioned way to connect to them. Existing platforms like Fiverr or Upwork are built for professionals, take massive cuts, and don't work for immediate, in-person campus needs.

Also, RIT is rapidly expanding its footprint as a premier research institution, but the infrastructure to support undergraduate collaboration hasn't kept up. Students are driving incredible projects, yet they remain deeply siloed. There is currently no frictionless, campus-sanctioned platform for students to seamlessly find peer reviewers, recruit study participants, or connect with co-authors. We are building the missing connective tissue for RIT's research community.

That is why we built TigerTail. It is a hyper-local, peer-to-peer ecosystem designed specifically to be the connective tissue of the RIT student body. We built a platform that democratizes help, drives student research, and empowers student leadership.

What it does

TigerTail is a hyper-local, peer-to-peer micro-economy designed exclusively to be the connective tissue of the RIT campus. It connects students experiencing immediate, localized problems (like a coding memory leak at 2 AM or a flat bike tire) with the exact peers down the hall who have the skills to solve them.

Instead of acting as a traditional job board, TigerTail functions as a comprehensive campus ecosystem built on mutual aid, academic collaboration, and frictionless skill-sharing.

Core Features:

The Gemini AI Appraiser: We eliminated the social anxiety of pricing your own skills or haggling with a peer. When a user describes what they need, the Gemini API acts as an objective economic engine. It analyzes the complexity of the task and automatically suggests a fair "TigerCredit" price (e.g., 40 Credits for C++ debugging, 0 Credits for a mutual study session), while auto-generating categorization tags.

Targeted Marketplaces: The feed is split into distinct zones to organize campus chaos. The Academic board handles urgent tutoring and technical debugging, while the Campus Life board handles physical, logistical favours like bike repair or moving furniture.

The Academic Research Hub: RIT is a research powerhouse, so we built a dedicated space for academic matchmaking. Students can effortlessly recruit participants for IRB-approved studies, find peer reviewers for conference papers, or seek out co-authors for capstone projects.

Built-In IRB Compliance: To respect university ethics, the Research Hub includes an "IRB Approved" toggle, allowing researchers to input their protocol numbers when dealing with human subjects, ensuring the platform remains a safe, university-compliant environment.

The Publication Showcase: Capstone projects shouldn't collect dust in a Google Drive. Students can post their published research to the feed, where our AI engine automatically generates a basic summary of their complex PDF, making cutting-edge RIT research accessible to the entire student body.

Mutual Aid Ecosystem: Not every favour requires payment. TigerTail heavily features a "0-Credit" mutual aid system, allowing students to build their campus reputation purely by volunteering their time and helping their peers succeed.

How we built it

-The Core Stack: We built the entire application using TypeScript. This gave us end-to-end type safety, fewer runtime errors, and allowed us to iterate incredibly fast during the hackathon crunch while managing complex state across the different marketplace boards.

-The Frontend: We crafted the UI using React and Tailwind CSS, focusing on a mobile-first, "glassmorphism" aesthetic. We designed custom, reusable components for the Gig Cards, the multi-tab navigation (Academic, Campus Life, Research), and the IRB compliance toggles.

-The AI Brain: We integrated the Google Gemini API as the economic and analytical engine of the platform. When a user posts a gig or a research abstract, our application sends the text to Gemini with a strict system prompt. Gemini processes the context and returns structured data—generating fair "TigerCredit" prices, auto-assigning category tags, and synthesizing complex academic papers into 2-sentence summaries.

-The Data Flow: We connected our TypeScript client to a backend database to manage the gig lifecycle, allowing users to post, accept, and mark tasks as resolved in real-time without refreshing the page.

Some challenges we ran into

We encountered several challenges during the project. For instance, in the profile sections beneath the stats, the accept and complete indicators were not changing as expected. Additionally, we faced difficulties with the profile layout, as the banner at the top was overlapping the individual's name.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Some of the key accomplishments include the overall formatting of the platform, particularly the development of separate tabs for the Research Panel and the Help Request Panel. Additionally, we have successfully integrated campus life features into the platform.

What we learned

Using Gemini in coding can be complex, particularly when determining the most suitable applications. In this project, we explored how to incorporate AI in a way that is user-friendly and is still customizable for some of the features, like how much the individual thinks the gig is worth.

What's next for TigerTail

Implementing AI-driven Passive Skill Matching: Instead of users scrolling a feed, TigerTail will automatically push-notify the exact three students on campus most qualified to solve your problem the second you post a gig.