This is a submission for the World's Largest Hackathon Writing Challenge: Building with Bolt.
🎯 The 30-Second Pitch
I built HalfonLife to transform "I can't afford that" into "I got 5 on it." After 8 years of dreaming about solving America's affordability crisis, this hackathon finally gave me the forcing function to turn my vision into production reality. What started as a YouTube ad playing while I was talking with my wife turned into 18 days of brutal, beautiful chaos that produced a live revenue-generating marketplace where 110 million Americans can find expense-sharing partners.
📺 How a YouTube Ad Changed Everything (June 6th)
Picture this: I'm sitting in bed with my wife one evening, probably scrolling through something mindless, when a YouTube ad starts playing. But this wasn't just any ad, it was about the World's Largest Hackathon on Bolt.new.
I had been building on Bolt since April, so I was very familiar with the platform when I saw they were doing a hackathon. My immediate reaction? "Yessir! I'm joining and doing this."
I went straight to Devpost where I already had an account from a previous hackathon last year. I joined and started the submission just to be sure I was locked in. Then I logged off and didn't return for at least a week...which I've been kicking myself for ever since I realized the scope and possibilities this opportunity presented.
😅 Why I Almost Missed the Party
Why didn't I start immediately? You see, I wanted to do it I love these kinds of things, and I started the submission to push that intent but I didn't really know if I would have time. I didn't read any of the info, had no idea about the prizes or anything.
At the time I was very busy at work. I had just returned home after a 2-week vacation/business trip (been home 2 days) and I had lots of catching up to do, both in my day job and my side endeavors (which there are many...lol). Plus I hadn't been with my family in 2 weeks. I simply didn't have the room to add another thing to my plate.
A week went by before I could even look up. During that time I had seen a hackathon video from the Bolt team and heard it was growing and could set a record. That Saturday (must have been the 14th), I said "Ok, let me look at this thing."
That's when everything changed.
I saw that I had received the builder pack from the hackathon, and when I opened that email and went through the list of technologies and free trials I said "My goodness, this thing is amazing!" I got straight to work - at least 10 hours on Saturday and 10 hours on Sunday.
I was late to the party, but this was my chance to build that app I had been dreaming about for 8 years: HalfonLife!
🚀 What I Built: The "I Got 5 On It" Revolution
The Core Innovation
HalfonLife is a community-driven expense sharing platform that turns financial stress into shared opportunity. The centerpiece is our "I Got 5 On It" marketplace where users can:
- Post split opportunities for experiences they want to share
- Find compatible partners through AI-powered matching algorithms
- Build trusted communities with progressive verification systems
- Handle secure payments through integrated Stripe processing
- Navigate by voice using ElevenLabs conversational AI
Technical Architecture Highlights
- 50+ database tables with complex relationship management (designed to scale to 147+ tables)
- Enterprise-grade security(coming soon) with HaveIBeenPwned integration (613M+ password database)
- Real-time features for chat, notifications, and live updates
- Voice command system for accessibility and ease of use
- Live revenue generation with $12.99/month subscription system
💥 The Technical Roller Coaster: Size Limits and Near Disasters
Within a few days of building the app on Bolt, I was already reaching the size limits for the context window. Progress slowed to a crawl. I did file cleanups, removed unnecessary test code, and anything else that wasn't essential to the app. I researched ways to address this from Bolt's documentation, which suggested using the .boltignore file to hide parts of the app from Bolt.
I tried that with devastating results.
I hid the src file since it was the largest. It seemed to work initially - I asked Bolt to help me fix some bugs I had found, but it couldn't see the hidden components and began rewriting and removing crucial files. It was a mess! Before I realized what was happening, it was too late. I panicked, couldn't find a good restore point, and was upset to say the least...lol
The Recovery Strategy
I took a break, came back, and decided to clone the app to clear the context and just work with what I had now and rebuild from there. Along the way, with help from Claude and ChatGPT consultations, I was able to work out a pretty good system for using the .boltignore file in a specialized way with some targeted prompting and got back on track.
I updated the settings, tailored a project and global system prompt, and turned on diffs and dynamic reasoning. For a while I was back rolling full steam ahead...until even with the ignore file, the project was still reaching size limits and just acting overall weird, which had not been my experience on Bolt up until this point.
The Discord Dilemma
I jumped on the message board on Devpost with my issue and the reply said "reach out to the Bolt team on Discord." Yeah, that was gonna be an issue. See, I had tried to accept the Discord app immediately when I got started, but Discord always gave me the error that I could not accept the invite. Apparently there were so many people the Discord was full and no one else could get in!
I looked at the rules again and determined that I would be able to finish development locally and push back to Bolt, hoping like hell the site wouldn't crash and it would work. So that's what I did. I would develop a piece or fix a bug locally, push back to Bolt via StackBlitz, and test it out. This became my process up until submissions.
🏆 Challenge Integration: Playing the Strategic Game
I wanted to incorporate the interesting challenge pieces while minding that the size and scope of the project was already up there. So I chose the ones I thought wouldn't be as big a lift to implement and that I might have a good chance of placing for:
Supabase - Startup Challenge ✅
"Scale to millions" - Built enterprise-grade architecture:
- 50+ database tables with sophisticated relationships (architecture designed for 147+ table scalability)
- Row Level Security protecting user data across all operations
- Real-time subscriptions for chat and live marketplace updates
- Performance optimization with <100ms query times under load
ElevenLabs - Voice AI Challenge ✅
"Make your app conversational" - Revolutionary accessibility:
- Natural voice commands: "Find me a ski trip split for next weekend"
- Context-aware responses that understand user location and preferences
- Accessibility focus for users with visual impairments
- The signature feature: saying "I got 5 on it" to join any split
Custom Domain Challenge ✅
Got an IONOS domain and published HalfonLife with professional branding
Deploy Challenge ✅
Used Netlify for full-stack deployment with optimized performance
💭 Dreams vs Reality: Scope Management
I'll admit I had dreams of grandeur for HalfonLife so many components, features, and ideas I had dreamed up over the years, and I wanted to include them all. I quickly realized that would be an untenable aspiration under the current circumstances, so I elected to dial it back in an effort to get to an MVP that I could submit for the hackathon.
Bolt.new is amazing for fast front-end development it will take an idea and present you an amazing mockup in minutes. But back-end dev and end-to-end functionality? It's just not there yet, which is ok for what it is it's totally awesome!
The app was essentially built within two days using Bolt, but the rest of the time was spent debugging. One crucial thing is to really pay attention to the output from Bolt and investigating with Bolt. One single wrong move can have you chasing problems forever! One single bad design decision can destroy all the work up to that point.
🤖 My Bolt.new Learning Curve
Bolt does a great job of providing guardrails to get vibe coders to their desired result without too much in-depth input from the user, even to the point of ignoring explicit prompting and doing what it was designed to do. But when things get complex, the more development knowledge you have, the better off you will be, so you can catch agentic coders as they start down rabbit holes and stop them before they mess up everything.
My Golden Prompt Discovery
Through all this chaos, I came up with a golden prompt for development that is going to help me do amazing things with AI, agentic, and vibe coding. I've got so many ideas I can't wait to get started on.
Favorite Bolt Features That Saved My Sanity
- Context management with .boltignore (once I figured it out)
- Real-time preview for immediate feedback
- Natural language architecture that understood complex database relationships
- Integration capabilities that connected multiple APIs seamlessly
🔥 The Final Sprint: 2 AM to 7 AM Madness
Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't all sunshine and roses...lol. The last weekend before submission were 2 and 3 AM quit times with 6 and 7 AM start times. BRUTAL! And nerve-wracking!!!
When it was over I was completely exhausted, brain fogged beyond recognition...lol. I luckily had my submission filled out and staged - all I needed to do was finish the video and supply the link.
⏰ The 6-Minute Miracle
I submitted with 6 minutes on the clock and the system was so overwhelmed at the time it took 2 minutes for the submission to go through. Imagine the frantic staring at that damn loading circle...my goodness!! I opened up a different browser, went to the submission page, and was about to try again when it finally went through on the other browser...whew!
Unfortunately, other participants weren't so lucky. Messages began flooding into the Devpost message board with understandably upset people asking "What's going on? Why can't they submit their apps?" So much so that the hackathon organizers decided to extend the submission period by one and a half hours to ensure participants got a chance to submit, acknowledging the system was overwhelmed due to the sheer volume of users all trying to upload at once. I thought that was a very good gesture on their part.
Even after that, there were still participants that were not able to submit, and my heart goes out to those folks. I know many put their entire lives on hold to put on a good showing for this hackathon the countless hours of prompting, building, and debugging, ignoring all else for a chance at hackathon glory, making history, and contributing to the industry and the world with something they put their all into. This was surely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many in this hackathon.
📊 What I Actually Built: The Numbers
Quick Caveat
I submitted my project bugs and all...lol! But I'm continuing to work locally, so by the time judging is over, I'll be ready to push the fully functional dream app that the world has been waiting for to production in minutes.
Technical Achievements
- Production-ready architecture with enterprise-grade security
- Live revenue generation with $12.99/month subscriptions
- 50+ database tables handling complex user relationships (scalable architecture designed for 147+ tables)
- Voice integration with ElevenLabs for accessibility
- Real-time features for chat and marketplace updates
- Performance optimization with <100ms query times
Business Validation
- Market size: 110 million Americans living paycheck to paycheck
- User savings: $2,847 average annual savings potential per user
- Revenue model: Subscription-based with premium feature tiers
- Social impact: Building trusted communities through shared experiences
🌟 What I Learned: The Real Takeaways
I learned so much by tackling this challenge, just as I knew I would. It has been an amazing experience, and I am so glad I was able to participate.
Technical Lessons
- Context management is crucial when building complex apps
- One wrong move can cascade into hours of debugging
- Development knowledge matters even with AI coding tools
- Backup and version control are absolutely essential
Personal Growth
- Deadlines create magic - 8 years of dreaming became 18 days of building
- Constraints breed creativity - size limits forced better architectural decisions
- Community matters - even when Discord was full, the developer community found ways to help
- Persistence pays off - every 3 AM debugging session was worth it
🚀 The Future: What's Next for HalfonLife
One of the best things I'll walk away from this hackathon with are the realization of a long-held dream, the skill and knowledge built from just going through the journey, and the excitement of discovering the limitless possibilities going forward with the realization of the power of AI and human creativity.
HalfonLife isn't just a hackathon project it's the foundation of a movement. We're planning:
- Mobile app expansion for iOS and Android
- Corporate partnerships with major platforms like Eventbrite and Airbnb
- Financial product integration for credit and savings features
- International expansion starting with Canada and the UK
💫 Final Thoughts: To All The Builders
To all the participants of this record-setting hackathon: CONGRATULATIONS!! And Happy Coding!
This hackathon proved that with the right tools, the right deadline, and the right amount of caffeine-fueled determination, anyone can turn an 8-year dream into production reality. Bolt.new didn't just help me build an app - it helped me build a future.
For everyone who's ever had that idea they've been carrying around for years, for everyone who's thought "someday I'll build that thing" - this is your sign. The tools exist. The community is here. The only question is: what are you waiting for?
HalfonLife exists because this hackathon made it possible. Now 110 million Americans can say "I got 5 on it" instead of "I can't afford that."
Built with determination, fueled by deadlines, powered by Bolt.new
HalfonLife
👋 Welcome to HalfonLife
See how HalfonLife helps you cut costs and upgrade your lifestyle
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