Hackathon Team Finder Portal

Hackathon teams form in the last 48 hours before the event — in class groups and club chats, where the loudest voices pick friends instead of skills. The result is predictable: four frontend developers and nobody who can pitch, or a great idea with no ML engineer. Meanwhile skilled students sit out because they don't know any team needs them. This project is a team-finder portal that makes team formation deliberate. Every student builds a hacker profile — stack, roles they can play, hackathon history, availability status. Teams form around a hackathon and a problem statement, list their members and the roles still open, and browse candidates filtered by stack. A match score ranks teams for each student from skill overlap with open roles, hackathon experience and availability, so the right introductions happen. Team pages carry the idea, open roles with apply buttons, a team chat, and the hackathons they're targeting — everything formation needs in one place instead of scattered chats.

1. Students create hacker profiles with their stack, preferred roles and availability status.
2. A team lead creates a team around a hackathon and problem statement, adds founding members and posts open roles.
3. Students browse the hacker directory filtered by stack, or open team pages to see open roles.
4. The match view scores teams against the student's profile and ranks them with reasons.
5. The student applies to an open role or requests to join; the team lead accepts from the team page.
6. Accepted members appear on the roster, the role closes, and the team coordinates in the team chat toward the hackathon.

Tech stack:

• PHP · Laravel (REST API + Blade views)
• MySQL (relational schema with seed data)
• HTML · CSS · JavaScript (responsive frontend)
• Weighted team-match scoring engine
• Session authentication
• Role-based access (hacker, team lead, admin)
• Per-team messaging
• Git

• [Hacker profiles] Stack tags, roles, hackathon count, availability status and a short bio — a searchable directory of every participant.
• [Stack filters] One-click filters (Frontend, Backend, ML/AI, UI/UX, IoT/Hardware, Pitch/PM) narrow the directory to the skills a team needs.
• [Team pages] Idea writeup, member roster with roles, open roles with apply buttons, team chat and target hackathons per team.
• [Open roles board] Teams post roles with required skills; applications flow to the team lead for accept or decline.
• [Match scoring] Teams ranked per student from skill overlap with open roles, experience and availability — an explainable weighted score.
• [Team chat] A per-team message thread for coordination, visible on the team page.
• [Hackathon listings] Upcoming hackathons with dates and format, each with a find-team action linking teams to events.

• Complete working web application (profiles, teams, roles, matching, chat, hackathons)
• Database schema with seed data (hackers, teams, open roles, matches, chat threads)
• Match-scoring engine with documented weights
• Team-lead role management (accept/decline, role posting)
• Project report PDF (SRS, ER diagram, DFD, test cases, screenshots)
• PPT presentation for final review
• Viva Q&A preparation document (matching logic, team state model, moderation)

• Match scores are a transparent weighted formula, not machine-learned recommendations; no training data is used or claimed.
• Team chat is a simple per-team thread; it is not a full messenger (no file sharing, no read receipts).
• Profile verification is self-declared plus admin spot-checks; skill endorsements are future scope.
• The demo does not handle hackathon registration itself — teams register on the event's own platform.
• Profiles, teams and match scores in the demo are illustrative seed data.