This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge: Build for a Friend
What I Built
I built ScholarSentinel, an autonomous scholarship intelligence watchdog designed specifically for my younger brother, Daniel, who is a 300-level Computer Engineering student at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA) in Nigeria.
The Painful Problem It Solves
Daniel is a hardworking engineering student who applies to competitive undergraduate merit scholarships (NNPC/TotalEnergies, Chevron, MTN Foundation Science & Technology, PTDF, Shell, Jim Ovia).
Recently, he suffered a devastating blow. He was shortlisted for a prestigious screening examination, but the scholarship board never sent an email notification. In Nigeria, scholarship organizers frequently upload massive PDF candidate lists or post unformatted notices on obscure portal bulletin boards and educational forums (like Myschool and Scholar9ja).
Because his inbox stayed silent, Daniel had no idea he was shortlisted. By the time he found out through campus rumors, the computer-based test (CBT) session at the Akure center had already concluded. His seat was forfeited.
He had the CGPA, the technical talent, and the preparation to pass—but lost a life-changing full university scholarship simply because of a communication failure.
ScholarSentinel eliminates this forever. It acts as an autonomous scout that:
- Crawls scholarship portals and university announcement boards with SerpApi.
- Uses Google Gemma (open-weight AI) to parse messy circulars, match Daniel's academic credentials (FUTA, matric number, JAMB code), and extract exact CBT test venues and dates.
- Persists application and tracking states in MongoDB Atlas.
- Synthesizes an urgent audio wake-up call using ElevenLabs so sound cuts through notification fatigue.
- Dispatches an emergency message directly to Daniel's WhatsApp with venue coordinates, accreditation cutoff times, and required physical documents.
Demo
-
Live Deployed App (on Render): https://scholarsentinel.onrender.com (or run locally with zero config at
http://localhost:3000) -
Interactive Features:
- 📋 Live Watchlist: Real-time monitoring board with exam dates, venues (e.g. FUTA Digital Research Centre), and requirements.
- 🧠 Gemma Circular & PDF Scanner: Paste unformatted circulars or click sample presets (NNPC / MTN) to watch Gemma extract dates, venues, and confirm shortlist status.
- 🌐 SerpApi Autonomous Scout: Queries live educational forums and feeds for fresh releases.
- 🎙️ ElevenLabs Audio Alerts Studio: Hear the urgent voice briefing informing Daniel of his test screening date and venue.
- 💬 WhatsApp Dispatcher: Mobile phone simulation showing the exact WhatsApp alert sent directly to Daniel (+234 812 345 6789), with direct
wa.meclick-to-chat links.
Code
The complete source code is open-source under the MIT license:
emarc99
/
scholarsentinel
Autonomous AI Scholarship Watchdog for Daniel
🛡️ ScholarSentinel — Autonomous AI Scholarship Watchdog
Built for my younger brother Daniel (300L Computer Engineering, Federal University of Technology, Akure - FUTA)
Official submission for the Hacktoberfest 2026 Weekend Challenge: Build for a Friend
📖 The Story Behind ScholarSentinel
My younger brother, Daniel, is a 300-level Computer Engineering student at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA) in Nigeria. Like thousands of determined STEM undergraduates, he applies for major merit-based scholarships (NNPC/TotalEnergies, Chevron JV, MTN Foundation Science & Technology, PTDF, Jim Ovia, Shell).
Recently, Daniel suffered a devastating blow. He was shortlisted for a prestigious oil & gas scholarship screening test. But in Nigeria, scholarship boards notoriously do not send candidate invitation emails. Instead, they quietly upload massive PDF candidate lists or post unformatted bulletin updates on portal announcement pages and student forums (like Myschool and Scholar9ja).
Because no email arrived in his inbox, Daniel had…
How I Built It
ScholarSentinel is a modern full-stack application built with Next.js and deployed seamlessly on Render, orchestrating a suite of specialized partner technologies:
graph TD
A[Educational Boards, Blogs & Portals] -->|Automated Web Crawl| B[SerpApi Web Scout]
B -->|Raw PDF Tables & Bulletins| C[Google Gemma Open-Source AI Core]
P[Daniel's Profile & Applied List] --> C
subgraph "Open AI Intelligence Core (Gemma)"
C -->|Candidate Matcher| C1[Match: Daniel Aroso / FUTA / CPE/21/4892]
C -->|Entity Extraction| C2[Extract: CBT Date, Venue, Time, Requirements]
C -->|Action Payload| C3[Generate Structured Action Notice]
end
C3 -->|Store State & Audit Log| D[(MongoDB Atlas)]
C3 -->|Generate Audio Briefing| E[ElevenLabs Voice Engine]
C3 -->|Format Emergency Dispatch| F[WhatsApp Alert Service]
E -->|High-Priority Voice Notice| G[Daniel's Phone & Dashboard]
F -->|Instant Message & Maps Link| G
subgraph "Deployment & Cloud Engine"
H[Render Web Service] -.->|Hosts 24/7 Service| G
end
Architecture Breakdown:
-
Google Gemma (
lib/gemma.js): Serves as the cognitive entity extraction engine. It takes unformatted circular text and extracts the scholarship title, screening dates, CBT center locations (e.g. FUTA Digital Research Centre, Obanla Campus, Akure), accreditation times, and mandatory items (original student ID card, JAMB letter, invitation slip). It performs fuzzy matching against Daniel's student profile (CPE/21/4892). -
SerpApi (
lib/serpapi.js): An autonomous scout that queries Google for Nigerian university and oil & gas scholarship shortlists, detecting newly published candidate lists even when portal URLs change. -
MongoDB Atlas (
lib/mongo.js): Persists Daniel's applications, profile, and historical shortlist logs, with vector search readiness for matching past candidate records. -
ElevenLabs (
lib/elevenlabs.js): Converts emergency shortlist notices into natural, high-urgency spoken audio dispatches. -
WhatsApp Dispatcher (
lib/whatsapp.js): Since Daniel checks WhatsApp continuously, the system formats instant actionable messages with venue details and directwa.melinks. -
Render Cloud (
render.yaml): Cloud deployment blueprint ensuring 24/7 uptime for the Next.js service and background crawlers.
Why Does Open Innovation Matter?
"Why not just build this on a closed commercial AI API?"
For Daniel's use case, open-source AI and Google Gemma are genuinely non-negotiable. Here is why:
1. Strict Student Data Privacy & Sovereignty
Undergraduate scholarship screening lists contain sensitive personally identifiable information: Daniel's student matriculation number, JAMB registration code, National Identification Number (NIN), state of origin, and LGA. Running open-weight Gemma models locally or on a private zero-retention instance guarantees his personal and academic credentials are never transmitted into third-party commercial training pools.
2. Zero Marginal Cost for Undergraduates
Nigerian university students face immense currency exchange barriers ($1 USD = ~₦1,600 NGN). Commercial AI API paywalls make persistent 24/7 autonomous monitoring prohibitively expensive for a student on a university budget. Gemma open-weights run indefinitely on community instances or local machines at zero recurring token cost.
3. Offline Campus Resilience
Campus Wi-Fi and power at Nigerian universities can experience sudden blackouts. An open-weight Gemma model running with llama.cpp or Ollama on a laptop can parse multi-megabyte PDF candidate circulars completely offline without waiting on high-latency cloud round-trips.
4. Custom Agent Tuning & Independence
Closed APIs deprecate models, enforce strict token throttling, and alter system prompts without warning. With Gemma, the prompt engineering, table parser format, and entity extraction logic belong entirely to the developer and Daniel.
My Agent Session
This application was engineered collaboratively with an autonomous AI coding agent using the "Flipped Interaction" methodology from Build with AI: Basics (Joe / Devpost). Instead of guessing what to build, the agent interviewed me about Daniel's exact academic profile, past failures, and notification habits, systematically eliminating cognitive debt.
The session transcript has been captured and submitted to DEV via DevRelay:
You can also view the raw interactive session on DEV here:
https://dev.to/agent_sessions/scholarsentinel-building-an-autonomous-scholarship-watchdog-for-emmanuel-vy37d6
Prize Categories
We are entering the following partner categories for the Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge:
- 🌟 Best Use of Gemma ($200): Used Google Gemma open-weight models as the core extraction engine to parse circulars, extract CBT venues/dates, and match candidate credentials with complete student data privacy.
-
🌟 Best Use of Render ($200): Deployed the complete Next.js full-stack application, API routes, and scheduled watchdog crawler on Render using
render.yaml. - 🛠️ Best Use of ElevenLabs ($100): Generated high-priority emergency audio briefings that vocalize exam center venues and accreditation times to prevent missed notifications.
- 🛠️ Best Use of SerpApi ($100): Implemented autonomous web scouting across Nigerian educational portals and press releases to discover newly published shortlist circulars.
- 🛠️ Best Use of MongoDB Atlas ($100): Stored scholarship application lifecycles, Daniel's profile, and candidate verification audit trails.
Built with ❤️ by Emmanuel for brother Daniel Aroso (FUTA Computer Engineering, 300L).
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