DigitalOcean Gradient AI Hackathon 2026

Never miss a day of
childcare again.

Parents miss 13 workdays/year due to care breakdowns. The crisis costs the U.S. $122B annually. Abril uses AI to find providers, detect coverage gaps, and alert you before the emergency hits.

View Source
0%
Parents face work disruptions
0%
Left jobs due to care gaps
0
Verified providers (DMV + NYC)
0
State rating systems unified

Three steps to peace of mind

Step 1

Search Providers

Search 24,394 verified childcare providers across DMV + NYC using semantic RAG retrieval. Results scored by distance, quality, age-match, and capacity.

Knowledge Base + Hybrid Search
Step 2

Detect Gaps

Cross-reference 4 school district calendars (MCPS, FCPS, DCPS, NYC DOE) against your work schedule. Gaps are severity-scored and flagged weeks in advance.

Serverless Inference
Step 3

Get Alerted

Receive SMS alerts via Twilio weeks before gaps occur, with specific backup care suggestions near you. Plan ahead instead of scrambling.

Twilio SMS Integration

Proactive, not reactive

Current childcare tools help after the crisis. Abril prevents it.

Feature
Others
Abril
Provider search
Keyword directory
Semantic RAG (24K+ providers)
Gap detection
4 school districts, auto-scored
Proactive alerts
SMS weeks before gaps
Multi-child + budget
Combined cost estimation
Subsidy awareness
Flags voucher-accepting providers
Quality ratings
Single source
4 state systems → 0-100 crosswalk

Built for every family

Childcare isn't one-size-fits-all. Neither is Abril.

Subsidy-Aware Search

Over 40% of providers in our database accept childcare vouchers. Abril flags them so low-income families don't have to guess.

Multi-Child Aware

Have a toddler and a preschooler? Abril finds providers that serve all your children's age groups and estimates combined monthly costs.

Emotionally Intelligent

Mothers carry 71% of childcare's cognitive labor. Abril is designed to distribute the load, not add to it.

Military Family Support

Highlights providers participating in the MCCYN subsidy program, supporting military families navigating frequent relocations.

"Childcare isn't about smarter to-do lists for one parent. It's about building an operating system for the entire care village — so families can be proactive, not reactive."

Abril Team

DigitalOcean Gradient AI Hackathon

5
Datasets
4
Districts
2
Metros

Talk to Abril

Try the quick actions or type your own question. Powered by DigitalOcean Gradient AI.

Full-Stack Gradient AI

Every component of the DigitalOcean Gradient AI platform, deeply integrated.

Data Flow Architecture

Client
Web / SMS / Calendar
Agent Dev Kit
3 × @entrypoint
Inference
KB (24K)
Guardrails
Tracing
Gradient AI Platform Safety Layer Observability

Agent Dev Kit

3 independent @entrypoint functions deployed via gradient agent deploy.

Knowledge Base

24,394 providers indexed with OpenSearch + GTE Large EN v1.5. Hybrid search alpha=0.5.

Serverless Inference

claude-3-5-sonnet via inference.do-ai.run. 10-turn memory.

Guardrails

PII protection (SSN, credit card regex), email redaction, and auto-appended medical disclaimers.

Tracing

@trace_retriever + @trace_llm for full request lifecycle.

Evaluations

5 test cases in config.yaml validate search accuracy, gap detection, and response quality.