Apr 1, 2025
Unstructured MCP Hackathon Recap
Unstructured
Unstructured
Yesterday, we wrapped up our first-ever Virtual Hackathon at Unstructured, and we're thrilled to share the results of this exciting event that brought together developers from around the world to build creative solutions using our Unstructured MCP.
The Challenge
For those who might have missed it, our hackathon challenged participants to build MCP servers that leverage Unstructured's powerful ETL capabilities. The goal was to showcase how our API can transform complex, unstructured data into structured, AI-friendly formats for real-world applications.
Participants had exactly one week to create their projects and demonstrate how Unstructured API can integrate with MCP to solve practical problems. Beyond just building a working solution, developers were tasked with creating tutorials to help others learn from their work.
The Winners
After reviewing your impressive submissions, we're excited to announce our three winners who each receives a $500 prize!
James Kanyiri - DarajaMCP
James created a financial automation system that extends the M-Pesa Daraja API beyond basic payments. His solution intelligently processes invoices using Unstructured's data extraction capabilities, stores information in MongoDB, and automates payment workflows through the Daraja API.
What impressed us about James' project was how it demonstrated a complete end-to-end solution that transforms manual financial processes into streamlined operations. DarajaMCP extracts invoice details, validates information, triggers payments, and logs confirmations automatically.
GitHub: https://github.com/jameskanyiri/DarajaMCP
Nancy Amandi - Invoice Tracker
Nancy built an impressive invoice analysis tool that pairs Claude Desktop with Unstructured MCP to create a seamless workflow for managing invoice data. Her solution extracts data from PDF invoices using Google Drive as a source connector, transforms the information through custom workflow nodes, and stores it in MongoDB.
Nancy's project enables users to interact with their invoice data through natural language. Users can ask Claude questions about vendor spending, due dates, and service categories without writing complex database queries - a perfect example of how Unstructured's preprocessing capabilities can power intuitive AI applications.
GitHub: https://github.com/Nancy9ice/MCP-Unstructured-API-Hackathon
Heet Vekariya - Research Paper Assistant
Heet developed an MCP server specifically designed for extracting structured data from research paper PDFs. His solution leverages Unstructured's API to process academic documents and extract critical elements including titles, abstracts, sections, figures, tables, and references into well-organized formats.
What made Heet's project stand out was its practical application for researchers conducting literature reviews or developers working with academic content. The implementation features a complete workflow with Google Drive integration for source documents and MongoDB for storing the structured outputs.
Blog post: https://dev.to/heetvekariya/unstructured-model-context-protocol-hackathon-26n7
GitHub: https://github.com/HeetVekariya/MCPHackathon
What We Learned
This hackathon showcased the versatility of Unstructured's Platform in handling diverse use cases:
Domain-specific solutions: From financial processing to academic research, participants demonstrated how our Unstructured can be easily tailored to specific industries and workflows.
Full ETL cycle implementation: The winning projects leveraged the full potential of Unstructured Platform - from ingesting data from various sources to processing unstructured data, and finally loading the structured outputs into destination systems.
Practical business value: Each winning solution solved real-world problems, showing how Unstructured's ETL capabilities can transform raw, unstructured data into useful data.
Community creativity: The hackathon revealed how developers can extend and customize Unstructured's capabilities to build innovative applications that we hadn't even imagined.
Looking Forward
These projects demonstrated exactly what we built Unstructured for - to be the "Grand Central Station for GenAI ETL," handling the complex preprocessing of unstructured data so that developers can focus on building powerful applications.
A huge thank you to everyone who participated in the hackathon! If you're interested in exploring the winning projects further, check out the links to their repositories and blog posts.
You too can start building with Unstructured today! Get your Unstructured Platform’s 14-day trial, and process up to 1,000 pages per day for free.
