How We Built Metis in 7 Hours: Recovering Hidden Decisions from Open-Source Projects

Description and use

In seven hours, Team Dot built Mentis, a tool to track verified commits in open-source repositories, showcasing rapid prototyping and AI integration.

Problem

Open-source projects accumulate years of development activity, but tracking which commits have been verified becomes difficult as repositories grow.

Outcome

Mentis was successfully built in under seven hours, enabling developers to easily monitor verified commits in open-source repositories, demonstrating rapid prototyping and effective AI integration.

Workflow

• 1. Selected problem statement during Hack Day.
• 2. Designed Mentis to track verified commits.
• 3. Built frontend with Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS.
• 4. Developed backend API with Python and FastAPI.
• 5. Stored data in PostgreSQL.
• 6. Integrated AI to analyze repository context.
• 7. Debugged data flow issues where AI lacked backend code context.
• 8. Completed product in ~7 hours and merged PR at 5:30 AM.
• 9. Prepared presentation for Hack Day.

Evidence

Open-source projects accumulate years of development activity across GitHub commits, pull requests, issues, and code changes.

Source

We wanted Mentis to help answer one important question: What verified changes have been made to this repository?

Source

Our tech stack included: Frontend: Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS; Backend: Python, FastAPI REST API; Database: PostgreSQL

Source

We wanted the AI to work with repository information, but it wasn't fetching the backend code as expected. That meant the AI was missing important context required for analysis.

Source

After nearly seven hours of work, we finally merged our PR.

Source