Hacksify | Devpost

Inspiration Our inspiration stems from our everyday personal experiences in fulfilling our entertainment needs—specifically, music. Each team member shares a deep connection to music, which has become an integral part of our daily lives and a major source of happiness. However, when discussing the platforms we use to listen to music (such as Spotify, Apple Music, and SoundCloud), we identified a common frustration: the constant navigation through hundreds of tracks, paired with indecisiveness about what to listen to in the moment. This often leads us to resort to playing songs from the "Recently Played" section, as it is typically the first area that appears when opening any music app.

What It Does Our app addresses this problem by integrating Spotify’s API into our website’s front end. It extracts user-specific data—including most recently played songs, trends in song categories, saved albums, and more—and visualizes these tracks as interactive magnetic bubbles on our website. Users can organize these bubbles either automatically via our AI-powered backend or manually through a drag-and-drop interface. This approach streamlines music discovery and makes it easier to rediscover favorites or explore new tracks, all within a visually engaging and intuitive environment.

Challenges We Ran Into Building our project presented several challenges. Our local host struggled to register real-time changes from our source code, which slowed down development and testing. We also encountered issues extracting images from Spotify’s API into our front end, limiting the visual richness of the tracks displayed. Additionally, we faced backend login issues, which affected user authentication and data retrieval. Finally, collaborating as a team was complicated by difficulties pushing and pulling changes to and from GitHub, which required us to adapt our workflow and communication strategies.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of We are proud of successfully integrating Spotify’s API into our web application, enabling seamless access to user data and music trends. Creating an interactive, visually appealing interface with magnetic bubbles was a significant achievement, as it required both creative design and technical implementation. Overcoming backend authentication hurdles and resolving image extraction issues demonstrated our problem-solving skills and resilience. Most importantly, we built a functional prototype that addresses a real user pain point, showcasing our ability to collaborate effectively and deliver a polished product under tight deadlines.

What We Learned Through this project, we gained valuable experience in API integration, particularly with Spotify’s Web API, including authentication flows, data retrieval, and handling rate limits. We deepened our understanding of front-end development, learning how to create dynamic, interactive UI elements and manage real-time updates. Working with a team taught us the importance of clear communication, version control, and adapting to unexpected technical challenges. We also learned how to balance user experience with technical constraints, ensuring our app remains both functional and enjoyable to use.

What’s Next for Hacksify Looking ahead, we plan to expand Hacksify’s features by incorporating additional music platforms beyond Spotify, such as Apple Music and SoundCloud, to provide a more comprehensive music discovery experience. We aim to enhance the AI backend to offer smarter recommendations based on user listening habits and mood. Future updates will focus on improving the visual design, adding social sharing capabilities, and optimizing performance for mobile devices. Ultimately, our goal is to make Hacksify a go-to platform for music lovers seeking a personalized and engaging way to rediscover their favorite tracks and explore new music.