ZotSwap

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  Our logo!

Inspiration

We wanted a chill way for UCI students to swap skills instead of paying for lessons. The spark came when Justin was learning piano thanks to Mark’s help and thought, “Why can’t everyone trade talents this easily?”

What it does

ZotSwap lets you make an account, list what you can teach, list what you want to learn, and connect with other Anteaters who match your interests. You swipe, you match, you chat, and you trade knowledge.

How we built it

Stack: MERN (MongoDB Atlas, Express, React with Next.js, Node) Styling: Tailwind CSS Auth: JSON Web Tokens Database: Mongoose models for users, skills, and matches

Challenges we ran into

First real dive into back-end work for most of us Wrestling with CORS and getting the API talking to the client Plenty of merge conflicts at 3 a.m.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Functional sign-up and login flow Live profile viewer that pulls data from MongoDB Two teammates, Sebastian and Mark, crushed their first hackathon

What we learned

Deeper understanding of Express routes and JWT authentication How MongoDB schemas and indexes work Better team workflow to avoid future merge conflicts

What's next for ZotSwap

Smarter matching and real-time messaging Calendar scheduling so students can pick meet-up times Rating system to highlight awesome teachers and learners

Built With

• express.js
• javascript
• jwt
• mern
• mongodb
• mongoose
• node.js
• react
• tailwindcss