Nexus Hack is an innovative platform designed to help students at FIU's ShellHacks find and form the perfect project teams. Gone are the days of aimlessly searching for partners; this application streamlines the process with intelligent matching, team management tools, and AI-powered idea generation.

Finding the right team is one of the biggest challenges at any hackathon. Mismatched skills, conflicting interests, or a lack of project direction can stop a great idea in its tracks. Nexus Hack solves this by creating a centralized hub where participants can:

• Create detailed profiles to showcase their skills, major, and interests.
• Get AI-powered recommendations for compatible teammates based on synergy and complementary abilities.
• Brainstorm project ideas with the help of the Google Gemini API.
• Form teams, send invites, and manage members all within the app.
• Collaborate instantly using a built-in, real-time team chat.

This project was built with the ShellHacks participant experience in mind, aiming to foster collaboration and innovation.

• User Authentication & Profiles: Secure registration and login. Users can create and update their profiles with academic info, skills, interests, a bio, and a profile picture.
• AI-Powered Teammate Matching: Leverages the Google Gemini API to analyze user profiles and suggest the top 3 most compatible teammates, complete with a justification for each match.
• AI Project Idea Generator: Stuck on what to build? Users can input their skills and interests to receive a list of innovative and relevant project ideas from Gemini.
• Complete Team Management:
  • Create and name a new team.
  • Team leaders can invite new members and remove existing ones.
  • Users without a team can request to join existing teams.
  • Members can leave a team.
  • Leaders can delete the entire team.
• Real-time Team Chat: Once on a team, members gain access to a private chat room to communicate and plan their project.
• Notifications System: A clean dropdown shows pending invites and join requests, allowing for quick acceptance or denial.
• Dynamic Search & Filtering: Easily search for other participants by name, or filter them by academic year, major, and specific skills.

This application is built with a modern and powerful set of technologies:

• Frontend:
  • React & TypeScript: For building a robust and type-safe user interface.
  • Tailwind CSS: For rapid, utility-first styling.
• Artificial Intelligence:
  • Google Gemini API (@google/genai): The core of our intelligent features, powering both teammate matching and project idea generation.
• Backend:
  • Node.js & Express: For creating the RESTful API endpoints.
  • Prisma ORM: To interact with the database in a type-safe and intuitive way.
• Database:
  • Designed to work with any SQL database supported by Prisma (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite).

To get a local copy up and running, follow these simple steps.

• Node.js (v18 or later)
• npm, yarn, or pnpm
• A running SQL database instance (e.g., using Docker)

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/your-username/nexus-hack.git
   cd nexus-hack/backend # Assuming backend code is in its own directory

2. Install NPM packages

   npm install

3. Set up environment variables Create a .env file in the backend directory and add your database connection string and Google Gemini API Key:

   DATABASE_URL="postgresql://user:password@localhost:5432/mydatabase"
   API_KEY="YOUR_GEMINI_API_KEY"
   SESSION_SECRET="a-very-strong-and-secret-key-for-sessions"

4. Run Prisma migrations This will set up your database schema.

   npx prisma migrate dev

5. Start the backend server The server will run on http://localhost:4000.

   npm run dev

The frontend is designed to be a simple static application that connects to the backend API.

1. Navigate to the frontend directory

   cd ../frontend # Or the root directory where index.html is located

2. Serve the application You can use any simple HTTP server. If you have Python, you can run:

   python -m http.server

   Or use the popular serve package from npm:

   npx serve .

3. Open the application Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:8000 (or the port specified by your server). The app is pre-configured in services/api.ts to make requests to the backend at http://localhost:4000.

• ShellHacks & Florida International University (FIU) for hosting the event that inspired this project.
• The Google Gemini API team for providing the powerful tools that make the AI features possible.