Welcome to the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon spotlight, curated by HackerNoon’s editors to showcase noteworthy tech solutions to real-world problems. Whether you’re a solopreneur, part of an early-stage startup, or a developer building something that truly matters, the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon is your chance to test your product’s utility, get featured on HackerNoon, and compete for $150k+ in prizes. Submit your project to get started! Welcome to the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon spotlight, curated by HackerNoon’s editors to showcase noteworthy tech solutions to real-world problems. Whether you’re a solopreneur, part of an early-stage startup, or a developer building something that truly matters, the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon is your chance to test your product’s utility, get featured on HackerNoon, and compete for $150k+ in prizes. Submit your project to get started! Proof of Usefulness Hackathon spotlight Proof of Usefulness Hackathon spotlight Proof of Usefulness Hackathon Proof of Usefulness Hackathon $150k+ Submit your project to get started Submit your project to get started In this interview, we speak with Alex Rai, the creator of ComLab, about bridging the gap between user feedback and development cycles. ComLab is a platform that transforms scattered feedback into organized, actionable tickets for product teams using AI. ComLab What does ComLab do? And why is now the time for it to exist? ComLab turns user feedback into actionable tickets for product teams and open-source maintainers. It uses LLM-powered prioritization and summarization to speed up triage, and includes upvoting so the highest-value requests rise to the top. Now’s a good time for ComLab to exist because product teams are overwhelmed by noise across multiple channels and need AI-driven tools to separate genuine signals from clutter. What is your traction to date? How many people does ComLab reach? ComLab is currently an early-stage hackathon MVP in public beta. Current reach is primarily hackathon judges/participants plus early testers discovering the live demo, Devpost submission, and GitHub repo. As traction grows, I plan to onboard open-source maintainers and indie teams who need a lightweight feedback/triage pipeline Who does your ComLab serve? What’s exciting about your users and customers? ComLab is for product teams, indie developers, and open-source maintainers who want cleaner, more actionable user feedback. It’s also for non-technical end users—people who can’t easily use GitHub Issues—so they can submit bugs/feature requests with screenshots, upvote what matters, and help prioritize what gets built next. What technologies were used in the making of ComLab? And why did you choose ones most essential to your techstack? The project utilizes Neo4j to handle the complex relationships required for a graph-based approach to feedback and ticketing. Additionally, Bright Data is employed to facilitate robust data gathering, while the underlying architecture supports the integration of LLMs for prioritization tasks. What is traction to date for ComLab? Around the web, who’s been noticing? ComLab has established its initial digital footprint through a live demo and an open-source repository on GitHub. Its participation in a hackathon, evidenced by its Devpost submission, highlights its status as an emerging tool in the developer community. ComLab scored a 40 proof of usefulness score (proofofusefulness.com/comlab-report) ComLab scored a 40 proof of usefulness score (proofofusefulness.com/comlab-report) ComLab scored a 40 proof of usefulness score ( proofofusefulness.com/comlab-report proofofusefulness.com/comlab-report ) What excites you about this ComLab's potential usefulness? User feedback is often scattered across emails, DMs, app store reviews, and social posts—so teams miss signals or waste time triaging noise. ComLab creates a simple, inclusive pipeline where anyone can submit high-quality tickets (with images), the community can upvote what matters, and developers can use LLM summaries + priority triage to respond faster and build what users actually need. I’m especially excited about making open-source feedback easier for non-technical contributors and using tools like Reddit Digest to help developers understand real user sentiment. Meet our sponsors Meet our sponsors Meet our sponsors Bright Data: Bright Data is the leading web data infrastructure company, empowering over 20,000 organizations with ethical, scalable access to real-time public web information. From startups to industry leaders, we deliver the datasets that fuel AI innovation and real-world impact. Ready to unlock the web? Learn more at brightdata.com. Bright Data: Bright Data is the leading web data infrastructure company, empowering over 20,000 organizations with ethical, scalable access to real-time public web information. From startups to industry leaders, we deliver the datasets that fuel AI innovation and real-world impact. Ready to unlock the web? Learn more at brightdata.com. Bright Data: brightdata.com Neo4j: GraphRAG combines retrieval-augmented generation with graph-native context, allowing LLMs to reason over structured relationships instead of just documents. With Neo4j, you can build GraphRAG pipelines that connect your data and surface clearer insights. Learn more. Neo4j: GraphRAG combines retrieval-augmented generation with graph-native context, allowing LLMs to reason over structured relationships instead of just documents. With Neo4j, you can build GraphRAG pipelines that connect your data and surface clearer insights. Learn more. Neo4j: more Storyblok: Storyblok is a headless CMS built for developers who want clean architecture and full control. Structure your content once, connect it anywhere, and keep your front end truly independent. API-first. AI-ready. Framework-agnostic. Future-proof. Start for free. Storyblok: Storyblok is a headless CMS built for developers who want clean architecture and full control. Structure your content once, connect it anywhere, and keep your front end truly independent. API-first. AI-ready. Framework-agnostic. Future-proof. Start for free. Storyblok: Start for free Algolia: Algolia provides a managed retrieval layer that lets developers quickly build web search and intelligent AI agents. Learn more. Algolia: Algolia provides a managed retrieval layer that lets developers quickly build web search and intelligent AI agents. Learn more. Algolia: Learn more
