Excited to share that I just submitted SOLTutor.ai to the Mind the Product “Everyone Ships Now” hackathon — a 30-day global build challenge celebrating World Product Day.
This One Started Personal
I have two boys — one in elementary, one in middle school — and I’ve spent plenty of evenings helping them prep for Virginia SOL tests. The challenge is real: study time often turns into worksheet battles, and most tools today force a tradeoff between test prep, engagement, and actually learning how to think. I wanted to build something that tackled all three.
What SOLTutor.ai Does
SOLTutor.ai is an interactive learning app where students step into historical scenarios — starting with the Jamestown settlement — make decisions, explain their reasoning, and get AI coaching on the quality of their thinking. It’s not about getting the right answer. It’s about how and why you got there. On the teacher side, a dashboard surfaces class-wide misconception trends and suggests targeted reteach priorities.
The Build
The build itself was a blast. I used multiple AI agents as pair programmers running in parallel — Warp, Claude, Gemini Flash, and Antigravity IDE. I started in Bolt, then moved to Warp and Antigravity when I needed more control over build quality and speed. One week in, the idea was a sketch. By submission day, my kids were playing through it.
Novus: From Pendomonium to Personal Project
One thing I was especially excited about: getting to use Novus on a personal project. After seeing what Novus could do at Pendomonium — auto-tagging, building track events, submitting PRs — I’d been looking for a chance to try it on something of my own. This hackathon required Novus installation, which gave me the perfect excuse. Being able to see how real users interact with what I built, from day one, is exactly the kind of feedback loop I preach in product ops.
If you’re curious, the code is open source on GitHub and the app is live. I’d love feedback from educators, parents, or anyone thinking about AI in learning.