How I Won Hacktoberfest: Building StudySnap in One Day 🏆
I won at Hacktoberfest Hack Day Chittagong — and everything, from the idea to the deployed app, happened in a single day at the event. The idea When the rulebook landed — campus/study problems only, open-weight models only — I brainstormed around a simple frustration: studying from handwritten notes is painful. That became StudySnap : snap a photo of your notes, get a summary and a quiz. What I…
Hacktoberfest Hack Day Chittagong crowned StudySnap as the winner, with the entire journey—from inception to the live app—unfolding within a single day. The concept emerged from a straightforward problem: taking notes on campus is cumbersome. StudySnap, therefore, was born—snap a photo of your handwritten notes or lecture slides, and instantly receive a Bangla or English summary, plus an interactive quiz that cites the exact note lines it originated from.
In just four hours, StudySnap was born: it translates your handwritten notes or lecture slides into a summary in Bangla or English (switchable) and an interactive quiz generated solely from those notes, referencing them directly. All the heavy lifting is accomplished by Gemma 4 after a single vision call. The tech stack used was Next.js, Prisma, Supabase, and deployed swiftly on Vercel. No login was required as device-based history was sufficient.
Winning at Hacktoberfest Hack Day Chittagong (IEEE Computer Society IIUC × IIUC DES × MLH) awarded StudySnap a prestigious certificate. The experience taught a valuable lesson: always read the rulebook first. The constraints—campus/study problems only and open-weight models only—were the very foundations that shaped a focused, workable idea.
Speed was the key to success; launching a functional quiz with source citations was far more important than a flawless, time-consuming plan. Moreover, free-tier tools can fall short later on, so always prepare a backup plan. You can try StudySnap at https://studysnapiiuc.vercel.app.
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