Today was the SF Ruby AI Hackathon, an event I've been planning for the last few months.
And what a day it was.
We had a strong turnout, with over 55 developers. We kicked off with a quick orientation, outlining the schedule and setting the tone for the day. People started forming teams, throwing around ideas, and diving into code. People brought some great vibes. One participant showed up with a full-fledged multi-monitor setup — yes, you read that right, multiple monitors at a hackathon. Meanwhile, someone else was casually vibe-coding on an iPad.
After the lunch break (thanks Sentry for the food), the building continued. Along with the judges, I went around the room to get a quick vibe check.
Demos began at 4 PM — each team had just two minutes to showcase what they'd created.
And honestly? I was blown away.
I was surprised to see what people could build in less than eight hours. I was relieved that I was not the judge because selecting the top three would be a challenge. Many thanks to Kamil Nicieja, Justin Bowen, Sarah Mei, and Victoria Melnikova for doing a fantastic job.
The winners were:
- Vibeseq - collaborative music production by Josh Leichtung
- LLM Workbench - build LLM-enabled pipelines by Jonte Craighead
- Wheel Town - making cities safer for cyclists by Andrew Ford and Nathan Tate
Alongside these, there were plenty of other interesting projects — from AI-assisted couple counseling to tools for programming in foreign languages.
What stood out was the enthusiasm within the Ruby community for AI. It has really inspired people to be builders, similar to what Rails did a decade back.
So what next? Will there be another hackathon? I was thinking of bringing back Rails Rumble, a 48-hour hackathon but now with an AI twist. DM me if you're interested.