Cold Start
A browser extension that rewrites intimidating forms into one question at a time. Built for Cold Open — build a tool that helps someone do the very first step of a task they have been avoiding. Form detection and the single-question overlay. The interface is deliberately narrow: one path, done properly, rather than a broad surface that half-works at the deadline.
Gallery
Screens
Cold Start — main view
Cold Start — result state
On the clock
What shipped, what didn't
Completed in time
Form detection and the single-question overlay.
Unfinished / faked
Breaks on forms with conditional fields.
Obstacles
Lost four minutes to an auth redirect loop that turned out to be a trailing slash.
Lessons learned
Scope down before the timer starts, not at minute 20 when you're already committed.
Process
Prompting approach
Started from a single system prompt describing the user and their constraint, then iterated with the assistant on the Cold Start data model before writing any interface code. Full prompt log is in the repository under /prompts.
Fairness
Disclosures
Declared by the builder at submission time, visible to judges before scoring.
Reused a personal utility file for date formatting (~40 lines), linked in the repo README.
Judging
Public feedback
Judges' private notes stay private — this is what they chose to say publicly.
Elena Voss
VP of Engineering, Harbor Compute
The idea is strong and the execution is most of the way there. The demo path broke once, which is what separates this from the top three today.
Hana Kobayashi
Principal Research Engineer, Independent
The idea is strong and the execution is most of the way there. The demo path broke once, which is what separates this from the top three today.
Tomas Eriksen
Developer Advocate, Independent
Good instinct on the problem. I would have liked to see the model doing more of the reasoning rather than formatting output.
Discussion
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