| UISe this website : |
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| https://huggingface.co/build-small-hackathon |
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| also we're buildin g this: |
| An Adventure in Thousand Token Wood |
| Build something delightful that wouldn't exist without AI. Wander somewhere weirder. A toy, a tiny game, a strange interactive story, an art experiment that surprises you. The AI should be doing the fun thing — not just helping you build it. Strange is good. Joyful is the bar. |
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| Judged on |
| Genuinely delightful (would you show a friend?) |
| AI is load-bearing for the experience |
| Originality of concept |
| Polish of the Gradio app |
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| so this means we have to make |
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| Hosted by Gradio · Hugging Face |
| Anchor Sponsors OpenBMB · OpenAI · NVIDIA · Modal |
| Cash & Prizes $40k+ |
| Our Trail Partners |
| Backed by the best in AI. |
| The folks making this adventure possible. |
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| Anchor Sponsors |
| ★ Anchor Sponsor ★ |
| OpenAI Logo |
| $10,000 in cash prizes, plus $100 in Codex credits for the first 1,000 participants. |
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| ★ Anchor Sponsor ★ |
| NVIDIA Logo |
| Two RTX 5080 GPUs🔥 as physical prizes. |
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| ★ Anchor Sponsor ★ |
| Modal Logo |
| $250 in Modal credits for every participant, plus $20,000 in credits for the winners. |
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| ★ Anchor Sponsor ★ |
| OpenBMB Logo |
| $10,000 in special category prizes — split across both tracks for the standout OpenBMB picks. |
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| Supporting Sponsors |
| Cohere Logo |
| Cohere |
| $5,000 in cash prize contribution to the pool. |
| Black Forest Labs Logo |
| Black Forest Labs |
| $3,000 in cash prize contribution to the pool. |
| More |
| soon ✦ |
| More partners on the trail |
| We're still chatting with friends across the AI world — new names will land here as things get finalized. Stay tuned. |
| Total Prize Pool |
| $40,000+ in cash & physical prizes across both tracks — plus sponsor credits for participants & winners |
| Registrations are now closed. The trail opens June 5. |
| Sign-ups wrapped on June 3, 2026. Registered builders — you're in! Hop into the Discord, find your teammates, and start sketching. The hack window runs June 5–15. |
| → Join the Discord ← |
| ❋ |
| Chapter Zero — Why this exists |
| The pace of AI over the last year has been anxiety-inducing. Labs release larger and larger models that do more of the things that make us feel human — writing, drawing, speaking, coding. No wonder more than half of us think the risks of AI outweigh the benefits. |
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| We're sponsoring a hackathon to take things back to how they felt in 2021 — when models were small enough to tinker with, and the vibe was fun and hopeful about how this technology could improve our lives. |
| This hackathon is different. Rather than using a giant LLM to ship yet another B2B SaaS, we want you to think small. Armed with only 32 billion parameters, solve a problem someone you know is facing — or build something whimsical. |
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| ❋ |
| Two Tracks · Pick your trail |
| Choose your own adventure. |
| Chapter One |
| 🏡 |
| Backyard AI |
| Solve a real problem for someone you actually know. Pick a person — a neighbor, a parent, a small-business owner on your street — and build something that makes their day measurably better. |
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| Judged on |
| Problem is specific and real |
| The person actually used it |
| Honest fit between problem and the small-model constraint |
| Polish of the Gradio app |
| Chapter Two |
| 🍄 |
| An Adventure in Thousand Token Wood |
| Build something delightful that wouldn't exist without AI. Wander somewhere weirder. A toy, a tiny game, a strange interactive story, an art experiment that surprises you. The AI should be doing the fun thing — not just helping you build it. Strange is good. Joyful is the bar. |
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| Judged on |
| Genuinely delightful (would you show a friend?) |
| AI is load-bearing for the experience |
| Originality of concept |
| Polish of the Gradio app |
| ❋ |
| The Constraints — Three rules of the trail |
| Pack light. |
| 1 |
| Small Models Only |
| Total parameters must be ≤ 32 billion. The model fits on a laptop. So should your ambition. |
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| 2 |
| Built on Gradio |
| Your app must be a Gradio app, hosted as a Hugging Face Space. That's the canvas. |
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| 3 |
| Show, Don't Tell |
| A short demo video and a social-media post are part of the submission. Make it sing. |
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| ❋ |
| Bonus Quests · Six earnable merit badges |
| Stack 'em on your sash. |
| None required. Each one grants extra points for your submission. Hover a patch to see it lift. |
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| 🔌 |
| Off the Grid |
| No cloud APIs. The whole thing runs on the model in front of you. |
| Local-first |
| 🎯 |
| Well-Tuned |
| Your app uses a fine-tuned model you've published on Hugging Face. |
| Fine-tuned |
| 🎨 |
| Off-Brand |
| A custom frontend that pushes past the default Gradio look. |
| Custom UI |
| 🦙 |
| Llama Champion |
| Your model runs through the llama.cpp runtime. |
| llama.cpp |
| 📡 |
| Sharing is Caring |
| You shared your agent trace on the Hub for everyone to learn from. |
| Open trace |
| 📓 |
| Field Notes |
| You wrote a blog post or report about what you built and what you learned. |
| Tentative |
| ❋ |
| How to Participate |
| Four steps. No application. No waitlist. |
| I |
| Register Closed |
| Registrations closed June 3, 2026. If you registered and joined this org, you're all set for the trail. |
| II |
| Find your people |
| Hop into the Gradio Discord. AMAs. Connect with Gradio and HF folks. Potential teammates live there. |
| III |
| Build & ship |
| Build your Gradio app and host it as a Space under this org. |
| IV |
| Submit |
| Drop your Space link, a short demo video, and a social post by the deadline. |
| ❋ |
| How to Get Started · Tools for the trail |
| Useful trailheads. |
| 📓 ML Intern |
| → |
| 📚 Gradio Guides |
| → |
| 🛠 Gradio's gr.Server — fully custom UIs |
| → |
| 🦙 Getting Started with Llama.cpp |
| → |
| ❋ |
| Timeline · A hand-drawn map |
| Two weekends in the woods. |
| Trail map |
| ✦ N ✦ |
| ✓ |
| May 07 – June 3, 2026 |
| Registration window. |
| Now closed. Sign-ups wrapped June 3. |
| II |
| June 5, 2026 |
| Hack window begins. |
| Two weekends to build, ship, and demo. |
| III |
| Mid-window |
| Live AMA. |
| Ask the sponsors and Gradio team anything. |
| IV |
| June 15, 2026 |
| Submissions close. |
| Space, demo video, social post locked in. |
| V |
| [date TBD] |
| Winners announced. |
| Per track, plus bonus-quest leaderboard. |
| Build something small. |
| Two weekends. Two tracks. The model on your laptop. The neighbor next door. |
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| → Join the Discord ← |
| Registrations closed June 3 — see you on the trail, June 5! |
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| Gradio docs · Hackathon org |
