Most rejected applications aren't rejected for skill gaps — they're rejected for weak proposals. Worth building:
- A guided proposal template/wizard (problem statement, timeline, milestones, about-me) based on structures that have historically worked
- A "proposal health check" that flags common issues: missing weekly milestones, no communication plan, vague deliverables
Important nuance worth designing around: several orgs (Joomla, Plone, Processing Foundation, and more) now explicitly reject proposals that read as AI-generated. If your AI features touch proposal writing at all, position them as brainstorming/outlining aids, not drafting tools — and maybe surface each org's AI-usage policy where you show their listing, since it varies by org.
GSoC orgs almost universally weight "did this person engage with our community before applying" heavily. A feature that helps contributors:
- Track which orgs they've messaged/joined Discord-Slack-mailing lists for
- Log small contributions (docs fixes, good-first-issues) they've made to a target org before the application window
- Nudge them with "you haven't contacted this org yet — reach out before proposals open" reminders