The results are in!
After reviewing an incredible range of submissions from global sanctions APIs to LLM usage aggregation apps F1 driver insights, we're thrilled to announce our winners for the Xano AI-Powered Backend Challenge.
Participants demonstrated the power of combining AI-assisted development with human expertise and we were blown away by the creativity and technical expertise from the community. While we wish we could recognize every submission, today we're highlighting the two winners that stood out the most.
Read on to see who they are!
Congratulations To…
Full-Stack, AI-First Application Winner
@jervi built Car Auction Live, a real-time auction platform that utilizes WebSockets for live bidding, background tasks for automated auction finalization, and complex business logic for reserve prices and winner calculation.
Jervi also shared their workflow for managing AI hallucinations and included several examples that demonstrates exactly the kind of AI-human collaboration this challenge was designed to showcase.
Production-Ready Public API
@kingdavid built LucideCrawl, a comprehensive web crawling and phishing detection API that goes far beyond a simple backend service.
With four endpoints (AI-powered URL safety evaluation, intelligent content extraction with Q&A capabilities, sitemap crawling, and depth-controlled full website crawling), LucideCrawl tackles one of the web's hardest problems: making sense of unstructured web data at scale.
Prizes
Our two winners will receive the following prizes:
Prompt Winners
- $1,500 USD Gift Card or Equivalent
- DEV++ Membership
- Exclusive DEV Badge
All Participants with a valid submission will receive a completion badge on their DEV profile.
Our Sponsor
We want to give a huge shout out to Xano for organizing this challenge with us. Their no-code backend platform makes it possible to go from AI-generated prototypes to production-ready systems without managing servers, databases, or infrastructure. We're so grateful the community had an opportunity to try out their service!
What's next?
More challenges are coming! Check out our challenge page to see what's launching next, and follow the challenge tag so you don't miss any announcements:
#devchallenge
Thank you to everyone who participated! We hope you had fun, felt challenged, and maybe added a project or two to your portfolio.
See you next time!
Top comments (5)
Awesome work! Congratulations!
Congratulations to all!
"Huge congratulations to @jervi and @kingdavid! Both projects are outstanding examples of how AI can elevate backend logic to production-ready standards. As a participant in this challenge (developing the REMI-IA ecosystem), I want to thank the DEV Team and @xano for providing such a robust platform and an inspiring challenge.
Building with Xano has been a game-changer for my workflow, and seeing these winning implementations only reinforces why this community is the best place to innovate. Cheers to all participants!"
"¡Muchísimas felicitaciones a @jervi y @kingdavid!
Ambos proyectos son ejemplos sobresalientes de cómo la IA puede elevar la lógica de backend a estándares listos para producción. Como participante de este desafío (desarrollando el ecosistema REMI-IA), quiero agradecer al equipo de DEV y a @xano por proporcionar una plataforma tan robusta y un desafío tan inspirador.
Construir con Xano ha marcado un antes y un después en mi flujo de trabajo, y ver estas implementaciones ganadoras solo refuerza por qué esta comunidad es el mejor lugar para innovar. ¡Saludos a todos los participantes!"
Cool!
Congrats @kingdavid and @jervi
All the best wishes and happy 2026!
Huge congrats to both winners 👏🔥
Both projects are a great reminder of what “AI-powered backend” actually means in practice — not just sprinkling an LLM on top, but building real systems with state, rules, and failure modes accounted for.
Car Auction Live is a solid example of using real-time infrastructure properly (WebSockets, background jobs, deterministic auction logic) and then augmenting it with AI instead of letting the model drive the core mechanics. That’s the right order.
LucideCrawl is equally impressive on the other end of the spectrum — turning messy, adversarial web data into a clean, production-ready API is genuinely hard, and the scope there shows serious backend thinking.
Also, big thanks to Xano and the DEV team for creating these challenges in the first place. Having a space where people can experiment, ship, and compare approaches without it turning into hype theater is genuinely valuable.
Participation badge or not, it was great to be part of the challenge and learn from what others built. Looking forward to whatever’s next.