PGPals

PGPR runs this buddy challenge every orientation cycle: paired teams work through a photo-task list, and an RA reviews each submission before awarding PGP Coins. The whole thing lives or dies by the leaderboard; it's the thing 200 teams check obsessively, so the one deliberate mechanic is timing: it goes dark right before the closing ceremony so the final standings land as a reveal instead of a slow leak. Scale is modest (~400 users) but the app has to feel responsive at event peak, so server functions are pinned to Vercel's sin1 region to stay close to the Singapore-hosted Supabase database rather than round-tripping across the Pacific. Everything else (auth, storage, Postgres) is sized to fit comfortably inside free tiers. Still building.