Samjho AI — Turn Complex Documents into Clear, Actionable Steps
This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle.
What I Built
Samjho AI — Understand the information. Know what to do next.
Have you ever received a college circular, scholarship announcement, application form, or government notice and struggled to understand what it actually requires you to do?
Important information is often buried in lengthy documents, complicated language, eligibility criteria, and confusing instructions. Missing a deadline or misunderstanding a requirement can mean missing an opportunity entirely.
That's the problem we're solving with Samjho AI.
Samjho AI is an AI-powered document understanding platform that transforms complex documents into simple explanations and actionable next steps. Instead of making users read through pages of formal language, it helps them understand the information that matters.
What can Samjho AI do?
- Simplify complex documents: Convert formal and complicated language into easy-to-understand explanations.
- Extract important information: Highlight eligibility criteria, deadlines, required documents, and key instructions.
- Generate actionable next steps: Help users understand what they need to do after reading a document.
- Support document-based questions: Build toward grounded question answering so users can ask questions about the information in their documents.
Who is it for?
Our initial target users are students, particularly those who regularly deal with college notices, scholarship announcements, internship opportunities, and application requirements. The platform could also help job seekers and individuals navigating public notices and administrative paperwork.
From a side-hustle perspective, Samjho AI could evolve into a freemium product, with basic document explanations available for free and paid plans offering higher usage limits, advanced document analysis, and additional productivity features. These are potential monetization paths, not an existing paid offering.
Our goal is simple: make important information easier to understand and easier to act on.
Demo
- GitHub Repository: https://github.com/ShouryaShinde/Hacktoberfest2026_AetherElevateX
- Backend Connection Guide: https://github.com/ShouryaShinde/Hacktoberfest2026_AetherElevateX/blob/main/docs/BACKEND_CONNECTION_GUIDE.md
Code
Explore the complete project repository:
The project follows a modular frontend-backend architecture:
- Frontend: React + Vite
- Backend: Node.js + Express.js
- Database: MongoDB with Mongoose
- Architecture: MVC with a separate service layer
- Validation: Zod schemas for structured AI output
- Document processing: PDF and text extraction through the backend API
The repository also includes implementation documentation, an environment configuration template, and a backend integration guide to make collaboration easier.
How I Built It
We built Samjho AI using a React frontend and a Node.js/Express backend, keeping the application modular so that the AI capabilities can evolve independently of the user interface.
The backend includes request validation, centralized error handling, request IDs, rate limiting, and document upload and extraction support.
For the AI layer, we implemented a Gemma inference adapter with versioned prompt templates, Zod-based response validation, safe JSON repair, and a mock provider for development and testing.
The intended workflow is:
- The user uploads a document or provides text.
- The backend extracts the document content.
- The AI inference adapter processes the extracted text using a structured prompt.
- The response is validated against the expected JSON schema.
- The frontend presents the result in a format suitable for understanding key information and taking action.
Structured output is particularly important for this project. We don't just want a block of generated text; we want information that the interface can display consistently, such as summaries, deadlines, eligibility requirements, and next steps.
The project uses a provider-adapter approach so that the inference implementation can be maintained or replaced without redesigning the entire application.
Current development status: The API foundation and Gemma provider adapter are implemented, while end-to-end frontend integration is in progress. Grounded Q&A and session functionality are planned next.
Why Does Open Innovation Matter?
Open innovation made it possible for us to build Samjho AI around an adaptable AI architecture rather than locking the application into a single proprietary provider.
Open-weight models such as Gemma offer developers more flexibility in how they experiment with inference, structure their applications, and choose deployment options. The ability to build a provider abstraction also makes it easier to evaluate alternatives as performance, cost, and infrastructure requirements change.
For a student-built project, this flexibility matters. We can focus on solving the actual user problem, test different approaches, and keep the backend maintainable without tying every application feature to one model provider.
Open innovation also encourages collaboration. By maintaining clear API contracts, modular services, and implementation documentation, we can make it easier for other developers to understand the project and contribute improvements.
For Samjho AI, the broader vision is to make AI-powered document understanding more accessible, adaptable, and useful in everyday situations.
Prize Categories
- Best Use of Gemma — Using Gemma 4 for AI-powered document understanding and summarization.
- Best Use of GitHub Copilot — Using GitHub Copilot to assist with development of the Samjho AI application.
Other Technologies Used
- Ollama — Used for local model inference and experimentation.
Built with the belief that understanding information should never be a barrier to accessing an opportunity.
Samjho AI — Understand the information. Know what to do next.
Top comments (0)