This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by ANIRUDDHA ADAK

This is a submission for the World's Largest Hackathon Writing Challenge: Beyond the Code.

🌐 HomeWhisper – Beyond the Code

Building HomeWhisper wasn’t just a technical journey — it was a deeply human one. What started as a hackathon idea to unify smart home devices became a story of cross-disciplinary creativity, friendship, and a shared desire to make tech more intuitive and inclusive.

💡 The Spark of the Idea

The frustration of juggling multiple smart apps led us to ask:

"What if your home could understand you as a person — not just your commands?"

That question turned into a vision: an AI-powered, multimodal command center for your home that blends voice, gesture, and ambient intelligence.

We didn’t just want to build a product — we wanted to craft an experience.

🎤 IRL & Community Moments

Though we built remotely, we engaged deeply with the community:

• Joined Discord voice rooms for feedback swaps and late-night debugging marathons
• Got encouragement from mentors who reminded us to “design for trust first”
• Met another team building an elderly care assistant — we ended up sharing UI accessibility tricks

These moments were unexpected highlights, reminding us that hackathons are less about winning and more about belonging.

🙌 Shoutouts & Gratitude

• Huge thanks to the Bolt team for their magical developer tools — your prompt playground saved our AI logic
• To the hackathon community on Dev, thank you for making us feel seen and supported
• To everyone who tried our early build and said, “Whoa, this actually feels smart” — you made our week

📖 What We Took Away (That’s Not in the Code)

• Building tech is about empathy, not just logic
• Multimodal design needs more conversation than code
• Real-time collaboration beats perfect planning
• Voice, gesture, and automation aren’t the future — they’re the now
• A whisper can be more powerful than a shout — when it’s designed well

Try it out

🌐 Live Demo: HomeWhisper

💻 GitHub Repo:

🚀 See demo on YouTube:
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🚀 Live Demo

Explore HomeWhisper here:

🔗 homewhisper

🏁 Final Thoughts

Hackathons are usually judged by deliverables. But for us, HomeWhisper is judged by how it feels to use — and how it brought a diverse team together to reimagine what a smart home could be.

We didn’t just write code.

We built a whisper — and a story we’ll keep telling.

This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by ANIRUDDHA ADAK