What if technology could learn when to gently tap you on the shoulder instead of endlessly demanding your attention? That was the mission behind Hackathon Raptors' "Hack for Mental 2025: Harmonic Disruption Edition." This global online event brought together developers, designers, and AI enthusiasts to create mindful technology that respectfully interrupts harmful digital patterns using behavioral psychology, intelligent timing, and the power of gentle intervention.
✯ Top Projects: From Addiction to Awareness
- 1st Place — Clarity Pro (Team: LEO)
A comprehensive mindful browser extension designed from behavioral psychology principles to constructively disrupt harmful digital patterns. Clarity Pro features gentle awareness-building, respectful guidance, and seamless integration into daily browsing without aggressive blocking or shame-based alerts. The extension knows exactly when to interrupt with mindful prompts that empower rather than restrict.
"Very impressive, Good job team, multiple features to prevent distraction, effective intelligence, UX is very inviting and easy to follow, Tech stack is modern and modular. Have a good potential for wider market acceptance." — Sai Kalyan Reddy Pentaparthi, Judge
- 2nd Place — Dopamine Diner (Team: Tech Chefs)
A revolutionary gamified Chrome extension that transforms digital wellness into an engaging "dining" experience. Users build a healthy "digital diet" by managing ingredients like Grease (doomscrolling), Sugar (quick dopamine), and Greens (mindful content) through playful interventions. The extension gamifies awareness without shaming users for their digital consumption habits.
"Highly creative narrative-driven approach that makes digital wellbeing fun and relatable. Impressive integration of UX storytelling and behavioral change." — Sridhar Krishna Korimilli, Judge
- 3rd Place — Eliza: AI Agent Orchestration (Wei) (Team: ELIZA)
Enterprise-grade conversational AI agent that transforms habit-building through intelligent timing. Wei features advanced memory systems, real-time search capabilities, and comprehensive analytics. Instead of blocking websites or showing annoying alerts, it provides calm and gentle reminders like breathing prompts after excessive scrolling.
"This is a great project. It has a clear goal and does it really well. Instead of blocking websites or showing annoying alerts, it gives calm and gentle reminders. Like breathing prompts or small messages after too much scrolling or switching tabs. It feels helpful, not pushy." — Oleksandr Rudin, Judge
✯ Category Winners
- 🏆 Best Psychological Impact: Dopamine Diner (Team: Tech Chefs) "Dopamine Diner is one of the most creative and engaging takes on digital wellbeing I've seen. Loved the metaphor and the execution." — Solomon R Chigurupati
- 🏆 Best Technical Implementation: Eliza: AI Agent Orchestration (Team: ELIZA) "A well-structured and technically solid project with thoughtful architecture. To better fit the theme, it needs a clearer pattern-breaking or behavioral disruption mechanism." — Tufan Kılıçaslan
- 🏆 Best Design & User Experience: Clarity Pro (Team: LEO) "Excellent emotional & aesthetic balance! Adding usage analytics and adaptive logic would further increase impact as a next step." — Natalia Trankova
- 🏆 Best Project Presentation: Synapse (Team: Starcode Crusaders) "Synapse has a lot of technological ambition and the seamless syncing is very impressive. I'd love to see this scaled to more platforms." — Sandeep Dommari
✯ Our Esteemed Panel of Judges
- Nisarg Shah
Product Manager with over 8 years in Big Tech (Meta, Amazon), Nisarg specializes in AI/ML product development with a focus on search, recommendations, and personalization. At Meta, he launched and optimized AI/ML systems for Instagram Trends and Facebook groups. Previously at Amazon, he led the 0-to-1 launch of Prime Video Watch Party.
- Ananda Kanagaraj Sankar
Engineering Leader at Thumbtack and former Uber executive, Ananda brings 13 years of software engineering experience. At Uber, he founded the Elevate Engineering organization and scaled teams from 0 to 20 engineers for aviation systems. As an entrepreneur, he founded Sumatak Technologies, focusing on AI solutions for Enterprise SaaS.
✯ Key Takeaways
- Technology That Knows When to Step In
From gentle breathing prompts to gamified awareness-building, participants demonstrated that the most effective digital wellness tools don't block or shame — they intelligently interrupt with perfect timing.
- Psychology Is the Ultimate Design Framework
Projects like Dopamine Diner proved that understanding human behavior and cognitive patterns is essential for creating technology that truly serves user wellbeing rather than exploiting psychological vulnerabilities.
- Gentle Disruption Beats Aggressive Blocking
Teams showed how respectful, awareness-building approaches that empower conscious choice-making are far more effective than forceful restrictions or shame-based interventions.
Thanks to every team, judge, and curious mind who joined us in this digital wellness revolution.
Hack for Mental 2025: Harmonic Disruption Edition was just the beginning.
Keep building. Keep interrupting mindfully. See you at the next one.
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