What I Learned Building an AI-Powered Teacher Assistant for the GDG Solution Challenge 2025
The Google Developer Student Clubs (GDSC) Solution Challenge is a hackathon-style event that encourages students to build innovative projects using Google technologies — all while solving real-world problems aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This year, I challenged myself to build something meaningful, something that could solve a real problem. I stumbled upon the Solution Challenge while scrolling through LinkedIn — and it instantly clicked. I brought together a passionate team, and we dived in.
This technical postmortem details the development lifecycle of "ClassMantra," an AI-powered teaching assistant built for the GDG Solution Challenge. It explores the architectural decisions behind integrating generative AI capabilities with a robust frontend, managing real-time data states with Firebase, and overcoming the engineering hurdles of building scalable educational AI tools under pressure.