SoloDesk

Overview

SoloDesk is an AI-powered freelancer command center built to replace the scattered tools most independent developers and designers stitch together out of necessity — client threads buried in WhatsApp, projects tracked in a notebook, and every proposal written from scratch.

Built as a final-semester capstone at Aligarh Institute of Technology, it won Silver Tier at Google AI Seekho 2026, a national competition backed by Google that drew more than 10,000 entries across Pakistan. It was also shortlisted for the final round and presented at a full college exhibition.

The Problem

Freelancing creates a coordination tax. Clients message through multiple channels, project status lives in different places, invoices are generated manually, and proposals get rewritten from scratch for every new engagement. The overhead compounds fast when you are working solo with no operations support.

Approach

SoloDesk consolidates four core workflows into one workspace:

Client Portal — Clients access a shared project workspace without needing their own account. No friction for the client, no password resets to manage.

Two-Way Messaging — Communication between freelancer and client is centralized and linked to the relevant project rather than scattered across email, WhatsApp, and Slack threads.

Invoice and Proposal Builder — Both are templated and editable in-app. No more switching to a separate document editor or reformatting the same thing for every new client.

AI Client Communicator — A Groq-powered assistant that drafts client-facing messages for common situations — follow-ups, project updates, scope clarifications, late-payment reminders — in Urdu or English depending on the client context.

Technical Decisions

The stack is Next.js 14, TypeScript, Supabase, Groq AI, Tailwind CSS, and Framer Motion, deployed on Google Cloud Run.

Supabase handles authentication, real-time two-way messaging, and file storage. Groq drives the AI communicator with fast inference, making the assistant feel responsive rather than delayed.

Deployment was on Cloud Run rather than Vercel to satisfy competition submission requirements. The main deployment challenge was a Windows-specific gcloud build bug that required diagnosing the Cloud Run container config before the binary would build and submit correctly. No out-of-the-box documentation covered it for the Windows environment; the fix required reading through gcloud logs and adjusting the Dockerfile manually.

Outcomes

• Silver Tier, AI Seekho 2026 App Banao category (10,000+ national entries, Google-backed)
• Shortlisted for the competition final round
• Presented at a full college exhibition with a formal project report and PowerPoint
• Built end to end as a hackathon submission with production-grade auth, real-time features, and an AI layer