Last week I took part in MLH's Global Hack Week as part of Hacktoberfest 2026. I had one week, a healing ankle, and a goal of finishing my Hacktoberfest sticker book. I came out of it with a handful of small projects, 14 GHW points, and I'm now a Hacktoberfest Completionist (16 stickers). 🎉
Here's what I built, what I tried, and what I learned.
Challenge 1: Game Day Glance (built with Cursor)
Live app: https://game-day-glance.onrender.com
I'm a huge Atlanta sports fan, so my first build was Game Day Glance: It shows when my favorite Atlanta sports teams play next. It also shows the live games at the top so I can keep an eye on all the action taking place in one place.
I built it with Cursor using Grok. I was surprised by how well it looked on the first run. I only had to make one tweak to show the live games at the top. The colors and layout were on point from the start. My only thing is that it took awhile to generate the app. I do love the refresh button, it is very handy.
Challenge 2: Benchmarking Cursor's models
Next, I gave the same task to three models in Cursor: Grok 4.7, Claude Opus 5.5 and Gemini Flash 3.8.
Prompt (same for all three models):
“Write a JavaScript function formatCountdown(gameDate) that returns a friendly string like ‘Live now’, ‘Tonight 7:30 PM’, ‘Tomorrow 8:20 PM’, ‘in 3 days’, or ‘Sat, Oct 17 · 3:30 PM’ in Eastern time. Include a few test cases.”
I picked this because it’s a real function from my Game Day Glance app, a GHW mini app I built with Cursor that shows the next game for every Atlanta team.
Model 1: Grok 4.7
Pros: very thorough, and the result worked well.
Cons: by far the slowest of the three.
Model 2: Claude Opus 5.5
Pros: fast, and the result worked well.
Cons: none I noticed for this task.
Model 3: Gemini Flash 3.8
Pros: speed was in between the other two. It wrote the most test cases of the three, and it included code snippets right in its answer along with the files, which made it easy to review without opening anything.
Cons: none I noticed for this task.
Takeaway: all three produced a working function, so the real differences were speed, test coverage, and how they presented the answer. For quick, everyday tasks, I’d pick the fastest model that still gets it right. When I want extra confidence, Gemini’s extra tests were a nice bonus, and I’d save the slower, more thorough model for bigger problems.
Challenges 3, 4 and 6: Building my own Grok Bot
I created my first Grok Bot and named it, fittingly, Grok. Then I taught it two skills:
- ESPN next-game skill (Challenge 4): Grok looks up when my teams play next, and a routine runs every Friday at 5 PM so my weekend game plan is waiting for me.
- Atlanta events browser workflow (Challenge 6): Grok browses discoveratlanta.com and pulls together things to do in Atlanta.
It was cool to create a skill with Grok. It was a slight challenge getting used to using Grok's "computer" and the concept of that. Teach a Skill wouldn't work properly so I had Grok start its computer then we were off to the races.
The quick wins
- Cursor Pro sign-ups
- Tiger Cloud CLI + MCP signup
What I learned
- Small apps are the best way to learn a new tool.
- Comparing models side by side changed how I would pick them. I never did a comparison like that before with different models.
- Having Grok do something for me on a schedule felt cool but I need to see how I can apply it better to suit my life.
It was my first time participating in Global Hack Week with MLH. I really enjoyed it. It was cool to build from my couch while I recover from ankle surgery. I'm looking forward to next year!
What's next
I'm going to be diving in more with Grok Bot and how I can use it to benefit my life. I did get the X Subscription that includes X Premium, Grok, Grok Bot, and Cursor. I already had a sub to Grok so it's basically the same price as the bundle which is great. Now I have access to more tools for the same price each month!
Thanks to MLH, DEV and the Hacktoberfest team for a fun week. If you joined Global Hack Week too, tell me what you built in the comments! 👇
Top comments (1)
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