PivotPoint — Find the Change That Changes Everything

A better-paying job doesn’t always mean a better life.

PivotPoint is an open-source, AI-powered career and life decision platform built for Hack for Humanity: Detroit 2026. It helps people navigate job displacement, discover transferable skills, evaluate career opportunities, and make better decisions about their financial future.

Traditional career tools focus on finding jobs or comparing salaries. PivotPoint goes further by examining how career changes actually affect someone’s life.

For example, a worker earning $20/hour might receive an offer for $25/hour. That sounds like a significant improvement, but what happens when the new job requires additional childcare, transportation expenses, or a schedule that conflicts with family responsibilities?

PivotPoint helps answer those questions before someone makes a life-changing decision.

Key Features

• AI Skills Discovery: Uses Google’s open-weight Gemma 4 model to analyze work experience, identify transferable skills, and suggest alternative career paths.
• Job Decision Lab: Compares employment opportunities using estimated take-home income, childcare, transportation, benefits, and other real-life expenses.
• Financial & Time Dashboard: Visualizes monthly budgets, commuting time, family responsibilities, and scheduling conflicts.
• Break-Even Wage Calculator: Determines approximately how much a new employer would need to pay to offset additional costs.
• One Change Away: Identifies changes such as negotiating a different shift, reducing commuting expenses, or adjusting childcare arrangements that could make an opportunity more practical.
• Adaptive AI Guidance: Uses Gemma 4 to explain career transitions, identify obstacles, and suggest actionable next steps.

How We Use AI

PivotPoint integrates Gemma 4 (gemma-4-26b-a4b-it) through Google’s Gemini API as a core part of the application.

Gemma 4 powers transferable-skills analysis, career exploration, barrier identification, scenario explanations, and personalized action planning.

Financial calculations and schedule checks are handled separately through deterministic TypeScript code, helping ensure that AI-generated explanations do not replace verifiable mathematics.

Technology

Built with Lovable, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and Gemma 4. The project is published on GitHub with an MIT open-source license.

Why Detroit?

Detroit has a long history of manufacturing and workforce transitions. Workers facing changing industries need more than job listings. They need practical tools to understand which opportunities fit their skills, finances, schedules, and family responsibilities.

PivotPoint aims to make that decision-making process more accessible, understandable, and empowering.

Our mission is simple: Help people find the change that actually improves their lives—not just their paycheck.