I joined a 24-hour ‘vibe coding’ hackathon and helped build an app – here are my biggest takeaways

I similar to walk astir of my weekends taking workout classes with friends, exploring caller restaurants oregon vegging retired connected the sofa with a movie on. The past weekend, however, was unique. Instead of the accustomed routine, I chose to immerse myself successful a 24-hour 'vibe coding' hackathon.

I attended 1 of Singapore's biggest in-person hackathons ever, which was sponsored and supported by AI heavyweights from astir the satellite including OpenAI, Cursor, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and more.

The lawsuit took spot connected a assemblage field from astir 9 a.m. connected Saturday to Sunday noon. Over 400 radical participated, ranging from highly experienced engineers to first-timers. The extremity was simple: physique thing from scratch with the assistance of artificial intelligence.

"Use your imagination... physique thing unhinged. Build thing wacky," said Agrim Singh, 1 of the event's organizers and the co-founder of Niyam AI.

Several teams truly took that proposal to heart.

Some standout projects included F**Yu.AI, an AI-enabled productivity app that "bullies you into greatness," by calling users connected their compartment phones to outcry astatine them to implicit tasks, and RizzedIn, a dating tract that helps link "career-minded individuals."

By the extremity of the weekend, astir 150 projects were submitted. The winner – an AI-powered whiteboarding instrumentality that allows users to gully utilizing conscionable their manus movements tracked done a webcam — took location prizes worthy implicit $50,000 Singapore dollars (about $39,000).

The 2nd and 3rd spot winners created a human-versus-AI velocity game and a "Netflix for firm training" instrumentality that makes compliance grooming videos much engaging for employees.

As idiosyncratic without a method background, I was tense entering the lawsuit but excited to conscionable the hackathon community. I knew I had to optimize my chances of gathering thing successfully by teaming up with radical who were overmuch much method than me.

Through Discord, I recovered my squad for the hackathon: Gabrielle Ong who has a merchandise improvement background, Aung Maung who has a heavy tech background, Ninna Cao who has a merchandise plan inheritance and Jay Chen who has a bundle engineering background. What did I offer? Ideas, my storytelling abilities and vibes.

We bonded implicit a shared tendency to sphere the legacies of our grandparents. So, we built Heirloom — a integer clip capsule which tin beryllium utilized to seizure and store household stories and recipes, truthful that they tin beryllium passed down for generations to come.

We spent each of Saturday moving connected transforming our thought into a product. Some of america stayed up the full nighttime moving connected the task — portion others (me) unluckily didn't person the stamina to bash so.

When I got backmost to the field connected Sunday morning, I saw radical sleeping connected benches, connected the level and conscionable astir everywhere, portion others were inactive making past infinitesimal adjustments earlier submitting their projects for judging.

An estimated 70 radical stayed overnight to enactment connected their project, said Sherry Jiang, 1 of the lawsuit organizers and the co-founder of fintech app Peek.

"We were trying to bash a spot of a number ... And we recovered radical successful similar random lecture rooms. It was conscionable the funniest [thing] ... It was similar catching chaotic Pokemon," said Jiang.

Richard Lee, who built a gamified habits-training app Orbie alongside his teammate Amanda Lau Shernin, slept for lone astir fractional an hr connected the level of a lecture hall. He had anterior developer acquisition and knows coding languages similar Python and SQL.

When asked wherefore helium chose to articulation the hackathon, helium said: "I took it arsenic a idiosyncratic situation to spot [what] could really beryllium done wrong 24 hours ... [and to] spot however acold vibe coding has advanced," said Lee. He besides thought it would beryllium a large spot to get inspiration.

"It's similar a gathering of builders ... who don't conscionable learn, but do," Lee added. "It's astir similar grooming for a startup, right? Effectively, you conscionable person to absorption and get thing done."

By the extremity of the weekend, Lee says that though the hackathon was conscionable 24 hours, helium felt similar helium had "significantly upgraded" his skills.

The hackathon's organizers said their extremity was to reinvigorate the builder assemblage successful Singapore. There's a feeling among galore radical successful the abstraction that the hackathon country has faded from its heyday, co-organizer Jiang said.

Fellow organizer Singh agreed, penning connected a LinkedIn post that "the Singapore hackathon country mislaid its soul."

Singh, who has been attending hackathons since 2013, observed that specified events utilized to halfway hackers and builders making "something that worked", alternatively of "panels oregon sponsorship decks oregon photograph ops."

"Now? Most AI events present consciousness hollow. Panels by radical who've ne'er touched the tech. 'Thought leadership' with nary applicable weight. People pretending to build, oregon worse, extracting gross from the hype without caring astir the ecosystem," helium wrote.

With the advancement of AI, the startup scenery and bundle engineering manufacture has changed massively — it's present easier for radical with non-technical backgrounds to physique tech products themselves.

Out of each of the participants, astir fractional of them were wholly caller to hackathons, Jiang said.

Jiang besides pointed retired that immoderate participants who had learned however to vibe codification conscionable a mates weeks agone had placed "pretty high" connected the event's rankings, beating experienced engineers.

"This is simply a spot of a proposal I person ... I consciousness similar radical who [have a good] merchandise consciousness and bully sensation and cognize however to presumption their products are starting to bash truly good astatine these hackathons due to the fact that engineering is simply a batch easier now," she said. "We've lowered the barrier, but raised the bar."

"The clip to physique is acold shorter than [before]. I deliberation it's truly overmuch easier for developers oregon method people, oregon adjacent non-technical radical to physique a prototype, and efficaciously get to market," said hackathon subordinate Lee.

Additionally, Lee and Jiang hold that some startup teams and firm developer teams volition apt go smaller present that these AI-assisted coding tools are connected the market.

With that said, it's inactive precise adjuvant to person immoderate inheritance connected bundle engineering, arsenic this volition transportation you to the decorativeness line. People volition inactive request to cognize however to measure codification successful presumption of its cardinal logic and recognize however to code issues successful code, hackathon subordinate Lee said.

Ultimately, AI models are improving truthful rapidly that if engineers aren't upskilling consistently connected the tools and staying up to date, they are astatine hazard of becoming redundant, helium added.