THRD PLACE | Devpost

Inspiration

The idea for THRDPLACE came from the concept of the "third place"—that essential space beyond home and work where community happens. We noticed students studying alone in libraries, coffee shops, and online, missing out on the collaborative learning that makes tough courses manageable. We wanted to create a platform that brings back the social aspect of studying, making it easy for students to find their study squad when they need it most.

What it does

THRDPLACE is a study session coordination platform that connects students at the same school. Students can create study sessions for specific courses, specifying the date, time, location (on-campus, off-campus, or online), and topics they'll cover. Other students can browse available sessions filtered by their school, join sessions that fit their schedule, and communicate through built-in group chats. The platform handles session capacity management, participant tracking, and real-time messaging—turning isolated study sessions into collaborative learning experiences.

How we built it

We built THRDPLACE using a modern full-stack architecture:

Backend: FastAPI (Python) for our REST API, with Supabase PostgreSQL for data persistence and JWT-based authentication
Frontend: Vanilla JavaScript with a responsive design system, featuring real-time chat functionality and dynamic session filtering
Features: User authentication, session CRUD operations, school-based filtering, group chat with message polling, search functionality, and session management
Design: Custom CSS with a focus on usability, featuring modal-based session details and an Instagram-inspired chat interface

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was implementing real-time chat without WebSockets—we solved this with efficient polling that balances responsiveness with server load. We also struggled with maintaining consistent state across multiple pages, especially when users joined or left sessions. Designing an intuitive UX for session discovery and filtering required multiple iterations to get right. Finally, ensuring data consistency between session participants and chat messages required careful database schema design and transaction handling.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of building a fully functional platform in such a short time with features that actually solve real student problems. The group chat functionality works smoothly despite being built without WebSocket infrastructure. Our school-based filtering ensures students only see relevant sessions, and the search feature makes finding specific courses instant. We created a clean, modern UI that's both functional and visually appealing, and our authentication system is secure and user-friendly. With hackathons consisting of so many gimmicks and AI wrappers we are proud to have created an easy-to-use application with only genuinely useful features that bring students together.

What we learned

We learned the importance of planning database schemas early—our decision to separate sessions, participants, and messages into distinct tables paid off enormously. We discovered that vanilla JavaScript can compete with frameworks when properly organized, and that polling-based real-time features can work well for moderate-scale applications. We also learned valuable lessons about user experience design, particularly around progressive disclosure (showing details only when needed) and immediate feedback for user actions.

What's next for THRDPLACE

We're excited to expand THRDPLACE with AI-powered features that generate personalized study mate descriptions based on collaboration patterns. We plan to add WebSocket support for true real-time chat, implement a notification system for session reminders, and build a rating system to highlight reliable study partners. We're also exploring calendar integration, study resource sharing within sessions, and analytics to help students track their collaborative learning habits. Long-term, we envision THRDPLACE becoming the go-to platform for academic collaboration across universities worldwide.