#devchallenge#hf26challenge#hacktoberfest#productivity

Congrats to the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Winners!

The results are in for Week 3 of our five Hacktoberfest DEV Challenges! For Slow and Steady, we asked...

JemOct 30, 20264 min read

Cover for Congrats to the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Winners!

The results are in for Week 3 of our five Hacktoberfest DEV Challenges! For Slow and Steady, we asked you to channel your inner sloth and build something with open-weight models or open-source AI that rewards laziness.

The builds we saw were anything but lazy. Many of you showed exactly why open innovation matters for this kind of work: automations that run offline, keep personal messages and files on your own machine, and cost nothing to keep running once they're set up.

Thank you to everyone who built with us this week. Now, let's celebrate our winners!

🎉 Congratulations To…

Overall Winner

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady 🦥

Hotragn Pettugani

Oct 26

The laziest way to pick a 2027 health plan beat my model (82% vs 79%). So I built Second Look to tell you when lazy is safe

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #gemma #opensource

12 min read

Featured Category Winners

Best Use of Render

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady 🦥

Aina Zulfiqar

Oct 24

AccessPath: Clearer Forms, One Question at a Time

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai

7 min read

Best Use of TabPFN

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady 🦥

Elias Shieh

Oct 22

My alarm won't let me snooze if I'd be late

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #machinelearning #opensource

7 min read

Best Use of Tinker

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Advik Divekar

Oct 25

A small, not-so-smart model went from 10% to 99.6% at reading property deeds for $1.15, and it says 'check this line' instead of bluffing

#tinker #hf26challenge #devchallenge #hacktoberfest

12 min read

Best Use of Arduino

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Muhammad Murtuza Hussain

Oct 26

I sleep 4 hours a night because of email, so I built a sloth that reads it for me (Gemma 4 on an Arduino UNO Q)

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #gemma #arduino

9 min read

Best Use of DigitalOcean

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Nikitha Kishore Avadootha

Oct 26

Every group chat has one person who plans everything. I built an app so nobody has to be that person.

#devchallenge #hf26challenge

7 min read

Best Use of Gemma

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Samarth Kumble

Oct 24

I get 50 placement emails a week. A local Gemma now tells me which 4 I can apply to.

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

6 min read

Partner Category Winners

Best Use of Auth0 for AI Agents

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Aridio Silva

Oct 25

SlothGuard - a lazy access reviewer that asks your phone before it revokes anything

#devchallenge #hf26challenge

13 min read

Best Use of Backboard

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Jennifer Evangelista

Oct 24

Night Guard: an open-model guard that watches out for kids in game chats, so tired parents don't have to read every message

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

16 min read

Best Use of Browserbase

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Aarish mansur

Oct 22

My college ERP keeps logging me out. Sloth Clerk checks my 75% attendance at 7:30 AM and asks my phone before it clicks Submit

#devchallenge #hf26challenge

9 min read

Best Use of ElevenLabs

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Nikema

Oct 26

Talk to the Book: dictating the book I owe 57 people

#devchallenge #hf26challenge

5 min read

Best Use of Entire

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Melwin Siril Joel V

Oct 21

I let a 25 MB model choose the typeface for my quote cards. It got it wrong.

#hf26challenge #devchallenge #opensource #javascript

9 min read

Best Use of GitHub Copilot

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Dhruv Jani

Oct 21

I Built slothd: A Local-First, Offline-Capable AI Daemon That Patiently Organizes Your Messy Workspace

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #opensource #gemma

101

14 min read

Best Use of Mastra

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

daniel

Oct 23

I gave up naming my projects. My agents do it now.

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #mastra #agents

7 min read

Best Use of MongoDB Atlas

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

dipak agrahari

Oct 23

The answer was already in another thread, so I built ThreadSherpa

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

8 min read

Best Use of Sentry Agent Tracing

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Jose Antonio Granero

Oct 24

Fridge Sloth 🦥: snap your fridge, get a grocery list and healthy meals, fully offline on Gemma

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

8 min read

Best Use of SerpApi

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

chamod dhananjaya

Oct 22

I Need Money for My Studies, So I Built an Agent That Hunts for It While I Sleep

#devchallenge #hf26challenge

4 min read

Best Use of Temporal

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Kavya Sharma

Oct 25

Slothshot: a tiny model on a slow laptop names my screenshots overnight, and Temporal makes sure it finishes

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #temporal #opensource

10 min read

Best Use of Tiger Data

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Victory Lucky

Oct 26

Too lazy to read my newsletters, so I built an AI that reads them to me

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

12 min read

Best Use of Ultramarine

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Himanshu Kumar

Oct 24

“Bas do minute ka kaam hai”: I built VOX so 24 support tickets stop keeping me up

#devchallenge #hf26challenge

12 min read

Best Use of a .tech Domain

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady Submission 🦥

Niraj Khetre

Oct 24

Black October hit PHP, npm and PyPI. So I built a system that catches it in my app before I ship, with the fix ready

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #security #gemma

15 min read

Prizes

Overall winner: $250 USD, a DEV++ membership, and an exclusive DEV badge
Featured category winners: $200 USD and an exclusive DEV badge each
Partner category winners: $100 USD and an exclusive DEV badge each

All participants with a valid submission will receive a completion badge.

A huge thank you to our partners for making these prizes possible!

What's Next?

There's still time to join our final Hacktoberfest challenge! Week 4 runs through October 31: build something spooky, or honor the past in the spirit of Día de los Muertos, using open-weight models or open-source AI.

Jem for The DEV Team

Oct 26

Join the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge: Ghost in the Machine! $2,850 in Prizes Across 21 Winners.

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #hacktoberfest #ai

7 min read

You can find all five challenges on the HF26 DEV Challenge Hub.

Happy Hacktoberfest! 🦥