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Playwright Paladin Logo
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Inspiration 🧠
I remember I started getting into writing a few months ago, and one problem I constantly faced was self-control. I would constantly strive for perfection, which sounds good on paper, but it severely decreased my productivity. I would keep going back up to edit what I had already written instead of actually writing more. It was almost like I was an editor now, and it annoyed me a lot. My lack of self-control also caused me to often sit down to write but then end my crusade in the comment section of the Masterchef Season 3 Finale on YouTube, arguing with “gordonRamsay12345” who claimed David shouldn’t have been kicked out.
I talked about this with another writer, and she said even she had problems with self-control. I even found that several people online were also complaining about this. That caused me to look up any potential solutions, but most of the articles written about these issues either only talked about the problem or identified “you need to have self-control” as the solution, which was ridiculous.
What it does 🎮🛡⚔🖊
🛡Greetings, scribes! I am the Playwright Paladin!🛡
Meet Playwright Paladin. He talks in a weird way. I think he’s a boomer.
🛡You desire productivity? As do I!🛡
Playwright Paladin will help you reach your productivity goals.
🛡I’ll guard your scrolls with my life, your highness!🛡
Playwright Paladin saves your writing to your account, so you never have to worry about where your writing goes.
🛡You may go on writing, but as you make a new paragraph, I shall close the drawbridge🛡
Every time you write a new paragraph on Playwright Paladin’s website, your text above gets “locked.” This prevents you from going back to edit, controlling your impulses and leaving the editing to the end to ensure productivity.
🛡And if you are writing or editing, you may not trespass on the fields of ThyTube or Flix of Net🛡
When you’re in writing or editing mode, Playwright Paladin’s Chrome Extension blocks you from falling down the YouTube rabbit holes and other websites that waste your time.
How we built it 🔧🔨⚙🧰
We built the Playwright Paladin Chrome extension using plain, vanilla HTML, CSS and Javascript, and the Chrome Extension API.
The web app was far more complex. We used the legendary MERN stack. We first MongoDB and Mongoose for our ORM, then ExpressJS as our server. We used ReactJS and Tailwind CSS for our frontend and NextJS as a Server-Side Rendering framework. We also used Linode as a VPS and to host our Database, and we used Twilio's API to create passwordless yet secure authentication. We also used NGINX as a reverse proxy.
Challenges we ran into 🏃♂️🏃♂️🏃♂️🏃♂️
- Technology OVERLOAD 👨💻
We initially started with the idea to lock paragraphs to prevent editing, but we were split between a Chrome extension and a web app and even some other ideas. In the end, we made both a Chrome extension and a web app. This required a lot of different technologies, APIs, languages and more and was very hard to bring together.
- First Time using Various Technologies 🥇
It was our first time working with MongoDB, Mongoose, Twilio, Linode's database services, and ExpressJS. While getting MongoDB and ExpressJS to work was a bit difficult, Linode's built-in MERN stack support made it a breeze to host everything. Additionally, Twilio was also very easy to work with and we could implement it in less than an hour.
- Time Management ⏰
You would think that after all these hackathons, we would master time management, but of course, we haven't. By the start of the second day, we had nothing but an idea. By the start of the third day we had only a Chrome extension. By the end, however, we managed to get a web app and Chrome extension somehow, but this was a big challenge.
- One of Our Teammates Left 📤
One of our teammates was extremely busy during this event, so they had to leave. It was quite hard because we were one man down, however, we still managed to stick with developing our project.
- Getting COVID at the start of the hackathon 😷
One of our teammates at the start of the hackathon found out they had COVID, but because they had the idea for our project and really wanted to hack, they created Playwright Paladin.
Accomplishments that we're proud of 🏆🏅
- Everything But The Kitchen Sink ♾♾
We're really happy with how we managed to combine so much in one hack and have a system that consisted of a web app and a Chrome extension to boost productivity to the fullest!
- Overcoming All Our Challenges 👍
While writing this description, I just realized that we had the longest challenges section out of any previous hack I've made. Despite all of that, we still have an awesome hack that we can be proud of!
What we learned 🏫🏫
The main thing we learned while making this hack was all the new tech. A lot of us didn't know about concepts like ORMs or Dependency Injections which a genius teammate taught us while making this hack. We also hadn't used Twilio before and for communication, we now strongly believe it is a great asset. ExpressJS was very useful to create the server, and we learned a lot about how to use this effectively. MongoDB and Mongoose were very useful for creating databases and we not only learned how to use them but also learned they were incredible to work with. Finally, we had used Linode in the past, but never for databases or for MERN stack web apps, both of which were awesome to build with Linode, and we think we may use Linode for these purposes in future hacks, as well.
What's next for PlaywrightPaladin ⏭⏭
We want to expand our features for Playwright Paladin to boost productivity even further. While in our research we found self-control to be the biggest issue, we also found other big problems writers face that we want to try and solve with a one-stop solution.
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