Jem

for The DEV Team

Posted on Oct 16 AI-assisted

Congrats to the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge: Touch Grass Winners!

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #hacktoberfest

Clever projects using AI to force offline breaks

We are so excited to announce the winners of the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge: Touch Grass!

It was another week of record-breaking turnout, topping last week's Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge. Thank you all for helping us make these challenges such a success.

Our Touch Grass theme asked you to build something with open-source AI at its core that gets people off the screen and into the world, and you delivered. We saw a laptop that sends you outside the moment the power cuts out, a field app that turns a walk into an investigation where you go out with a question and come back with evidence, a kids' plant treasure hunt that will never let poison ivy count as a win, and more than a few apps whose whole goal was to get you to put them down. Many of you took your projects outside and told us how it went, which made reviewing your builds a blast.

Thank you to everyone who participated. Your builds made a strong case for why open innovation matters, from models running locally with no signal to tools that keep your data on your own device.

Now, let's celebrate our winners!

🎉 Congratulations To…

Overall Winner

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

Mike Kim

Oct 6

Paper Trail: Gemma writes your walk a field card, then the screen goes away

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

6 min read

Featured Category Winners

Best Use of Render

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

Tanay

Oct 11

Golden Hour: an open model that finds your 40 minutes outside, and where to spend them

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

7 min read

Best Use of TabPFN

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

Biprayan Choudhuri

Oct 12

Turnaround: an open-source hiking buddy that knows when you should turn back, and tells someone if you don't come home

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #opensource #ai

9 min read

Best Use of Tinker

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

Soumyadeep Dey

Oct 10

I Distilled a 397B Model Into a 4B One for $1.60. It Now Catches 28 of 33 Park Alerts That Should Stop Your Hike.

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

19 min read

Best Use of Arduino

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

Utsav bhattarai

Oct 11

I Won an Arduino UNO Q at a Hack Day. Now I'm Building a Device to Help Me Touch Grass

#devchallenge #hf26challenge

7 min read

Best Use of DigitalOcean

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

Souvik Biswas

Oct 10

Leaf Peep: an open model reads the trees, so you know where to walk this weekend

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #gemma #digitalocean

7 min read

Best Use of Gemma

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

Ansh Saini

Oct 10

Grow a Song: my run wrote its own soundtrack, with Gemma running on my phone

#hf26challenge #devchallenge #ai #ios

6 min read

Partner Category Winners

Best Use of Backboard

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

Dariusz Dumnicki

Oct 11

Weekend Micro-Adventure

#devchallenge #hf26challenge

7 min read

Best Use of ElevenLabs

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

-e.h.

Oct 12

Outside: I built a meditation app whose only goal is to make you stop looking at it

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

6 min read

Best Use of Entire

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

Changsu Seong

Oct 9

Should I Go Out? A Local Gemma Agent That Picks One Outdoor Plan, Then Tells You to Put Your Phone Away

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

11 min read

Best Use of GitHub Copilot

Yuvan Shankar M

Oct 12

Touch Grass Garden: a plant tracker that only counts the days you went outside

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #hacktoberfest #opensource

7 min read

Best Use of Mastra

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

Asi

Oct 11

Your photo picks the next street: a walking mystery on open-weight Gemma

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #gemma #opensource

20 min read

Best Use of MongoDB Atlas

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

Aryan Sethi

Oct 10

LumiRoam: the tour guide for beginner photographers

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #gemma #photography

11 min read

Best Use of Sentry Agent Tracing

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

Antonia Herrera

Oct 11

I asked Gemma to turn “I'm too tired” into “glad I went out” 🚶‍♀️

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #opensource #ai

15 min read

Best Use of SerpApi

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

Nikitha Kishore Avadootha

Oct 12

I Made Walking a Game: Quests, a Diary, and an App That Judges Your Screen Time

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #gemma #serpapi

8 min read

Best Use of Temporal

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Submission 🌿

CodersAcademy006

Oct 10

Butterflies don't take weekends off: 40,000 Pune sightings and a forecast that fell apart when I removed one column

#hf26challenge #devchallenge

9 min read

Best Use of Tiger Data

Anish Kumar

Oct 6

Nice Out: an app that learns your kind of nice weather, then tells you to go outside

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #opensource #ai

5 min read

Prizes

Our overall winner will receive:

$250 USD
DEV++ Membership
Exclusive DEV badge

Our six featured category winners will each receive:

$200 USD
Exclusive DEV badge

Our ten partner category winners will each receive:

$100 USD
Exclusive DEV badge

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?

Hacktoberfest isn't over yet! Week 2: Side Hustle is happening now, and there's still time to enter:

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle Submission 💸

Jem for The DEV Team

Oct 12

Join the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge: Side Hustle! $2,550 in Prizes Across 18 Winners.

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #hacktoberfest #softwaredevelopment

203

8 min read

Week 3 kicks off Monday, October 19, and Week 4 follows on Monday, October 26. Every challenge is a fresh start, so make sure to register so you don't miss an update:

See you next week 💚

Top comments (14)

Sohee Lee • Oct 16

Congratulations all! 🎉

Fayaz • Oct 16

Congrats to all the winners! 🥰🏆️🎉

Jem The DEV Team • Oct 16

Huge congrats to our overall and featured category winners! 🌿

@mike_kim_692aa79c288bfed8 @tanay_singh_1005 @code_neuron58 @soumyadeepdey @utsavbhattarai007 @sbis04 @anshsaini

Paul Ayoade • Oct 16

congrats to all winners, my turn soon

Muhammad Murtuza Hussain • Oct 16

Congratulations all!

Jem The DEV Team • Oct 16

And congratulations to our partner category winners!

@dumnicki @defiantlydefying @scs0209 @yuvan_shankar @asiboy6789 @aryan_sethi_afdba87340e96 @antoniahp @nikithakls17sys @codersacademy006 @anishisbusy

Thank you to everyone who participated, and see you in Week 2: Side Hustle!

Ben Halpern The DEV Team • Oct 16

Congrats!

Sarvar Nadaf • Oct 16

Congratulations 🎉

ADK BBX • Oct 16

Congrats all!!🎉

Alex Georgiev • Oct 16

Congrats to all the winners!

Jane Jones • Oct 16

Congratulations to all the winners! I love the idea of using AI to encourage people to disconnect from their screens and reconnect with the real world. These projects show that meaningful innovation isn't just about making technology more engaging, but also about knowing when technology should step aside and let life happen.

View full discussion (14 comments)