Get real people in the loop.
Most projects never meet a real user before the demo. Put your build in front of real people, live, and use what they say to get measurably better, all inside a single day.
Build something people can respond to
A simple app where a person uses your product, reacts to it, or labels, rates, ranks, or compares what your system produces.
Call the Terac API to bring the people
Launch your task on Terac and real people complete it within hours, so the full loop fits inside the day. You focus on building; recruiting and incentives are on us.
Turn that input into a better project
Product changes, prompt and retrieval changes, evals, or fine-tuning. Then show a clear before and after, ideally judged by a fresh round of humans.
Nine tracks, $11,000 in cash.
Enter as many tracks as your project qualifies for. The more tracks you enter, the better your odds of winning one.
Best Overall Project
- 1st
- $2,500
The best overall project, decided by the main panel of judges.
Best Overall Agent-Run Company
- 1st
- $2,500
The agent-run company that earns the most revenue during the hackathon. Revenue is the only criterion.
Best Use of Terac
Prize announced on the day
Criteria announced at the opening ceremony.
Best Use of Linq
- 1st
- $1,500
- 2nd
- $1,000
Criteria announced at the opening ceremony.
Best Use of Replay
- 1st
- $1,000
- 2nd
- $500
Criteria announced at the opening ceremony.
Best Use of Superserve
- 1st
- $1,000
- 2nd
- $500
Criteria announced at the opening ceremony.
Best Use of Pioneer
Prize announced on the day
Criteria announced at the opening ceremony.
Best Use of Band
- 1st
- $500
Coordination between your agents has to happen inside Band, so that taking Band out breaks the project. Teams building with Jam should show the Band chatroom in their video and let the agents collaborate on camera.
Best Use of Render
- 1st
- $500
- 2nd
- $300
- 3rd
- $100
Paid in Render credits. Projects have to use Render Workflows to qualify.
One Saturday, 08:30 to 21:00.
Doors at half eight, winners announced by half eight in the evening. Hacking runs eight hours straight in the middle.
- Doors openBreakfast and check-in
- Welcome
- Opening ceremonyRules, judging criteria, and track breakdowns. The doc with API keys and credits goes out here.
- Sponsor stage timeReplay, Linq, Fastino Labs, and Superserve, five minutes each. Attendance is required.
- Sponsor Q&A at the boothsBring your credit and API questions.
- Hacking beginsEight hours straight. Lunch and dinner flow through with no scheduled stop, and mentors circulate all day.
- Submissions lock
- Judging
- Speaker panel
- Judges finalizeWinners compiled
- Closing ceremonyWinners announced
- Wrap-up
Who's scoring it.
Founders and engineers from Touchmark, Olam Labs, Brekfuz, xAI, and elsewhere.
Ilia Bolgov
Co-Founder & CEO, Touchmark (YC S26)
Product Owner at Revolut. Maths and Finance at Imperial College London.
Roman Yanushevskyi
Co-Founder & CTO, Touchmark (YC S26)
AI Engineer at Lovable. Quant at Citadel Securities.
Om Buddhdev
Co-Founder & CEO, Olam Labs (YC S26)
Engineer at Latitude. Global top-25 Valorant player with 200k+ followers.
Shreshth Sharma
Co-Founder & CTO, Olam Labs (YC S26)
Data Scientist at RBC. Math, CS, and Business at Waterloo.
Shubh Mittal
Founder, Stealth
MTS at xAI. Engineer at AGI Inc.
Sarthak Ahuja
Co-Founder, Brekfuz
Founder at GR8ER. Z Fellow, CS at UIUC.
Arhan Singhal
Co-Founder, Brekfuz
Founder at SecureSense. Z Fellow, AI at UPenn.
Who's speaking.
Both join the speaker panel at 19:15, while the judges are scoring.
Ari Dutilh
Media & Talent, Solo Founders and ODF
Co-Founder at Bagel Fund. Founder at Photography Lounge.
Danielle Strachman
Founder & General Partner, 1517 Fund
Director of the Thiel Fellowship. Founder of Innovations Academy.
What you win.
$11,000 in cash across nine tracks, plus sponsor credits and interviews at Terac.
Cash prizes
$11,000 across nine tracks, awarded at the closing ceremony.
Sponsor credits
Credits and subscriptions from every partner, yours to keep after the day is over.
Interviews at Terac
We are hiring in-person engineers in San Francisco. Build something great and we want to talk.
How it's scored.
Three criteria for the overall prize. The human input is the point, so it carries the most weight. Sponsor tracks are scored on their own criteria.
Project improvement
40%A real, credible improvement driven by the human input, ideally a before and after human eval run on Terac.
What you built
35%The app or environment itself: task design, creativity, and UX.
Use of human input
25%Quality of the input, and getting signal efficiently within your credit.
Terac and our partners.
The day is put on with support from the teams below. Every one of them is running a booth.
What the partners are giving you.
Redemption links and codes go out in the attendee doc at the opening ceremony, and every booth can walk you through their own.
- Stripe
- 20% off Stripe Atlas. Incorporate with Atlas and you also get $2,500 in Stripe credits, and can create, send, and receive SAFEs straight from your Stripe dashboard.
- Render
- Platform credits for anything your workspace accrues: the plan fee, compute, bandwidth, and the rest.
- Replay
- Unlimited access to the QA platform for the duration of the hackathon.
- Band
- A free month of the Pro tier, plus the Band Discord and hacker guide if you get stuck.
- Interview Cake
- Seven days of the full coding-interview prep course, a $50 value. First 50 redemptions, expires September 30, 2026.
Good to know.
Anyone building with AI. Bring a team, or find one at kickoff. You will sign in to Terac as a researcher for the day.
Yes. Enter as many tracks as your project qualifies for. The more tracks you enter, the better your odds of winning one.
No. What matters is that real human judgment changed your project for the better, and you can show it.
Terac makes human labor available on demand. You define the task and the kind of person you need; Terac handles recruitment, screening, verification, and payouts.
API keys and credits go out in the attendee doc shared at the opening ceremony. Sponsors take credit and API questions at their booths from 10:20.
General-population participants, so turnaround stays fast and your credit goes further. No specialist panels are needed to win.
A working app, real human input collected through Terac, and a measurable before and after. Submissions lock at 18:45.
Anywhere you like, but the Best Use of Render track only considers projects that use Render Workflows.
A laptop, your chargers, and something you want real people to react to. We handle food and the people.
Who's putting this on.
Terac is a network of over 180,000 experts contributing to frontier research, with that expertise available on demand through an API and an MCP. You define the task and the kind of person you need; we handle recruitment, screening, verification, and payouts, which powers human-data programs for Fortune 100 companies.
We're hiring in-person engineers in San Francisco. Build something great this weekend and we want to talk.
Aug 15, 2026 · Humanmade · 655 Bryant St, San Francisco, CA 94107
Come build something real people can respond to.
Spots are limited and go fast. Register now, then bring a team or find one at kickoff.