AI Agents Hackathon

I went to New York City (NYC) for an AI Agents Hackathon on Sat. 10/4/25. I didn’t really plan to be in NYC for this event; I saw the invite on a random Discord channel and decided to go on a whim. I ordered the Amtrak tickets pretty much immediately and felt bad that I was spending $240 on round trip tickets, which is pricey. This was a crazy weekend where I had to attend a conference on Fri. 10/3/25 in Virginia, had Bible study Friday evening in Maryland, and then had to get to Union Station Sat. 10/4/25 at ~5:00 AM EDT for my train ride. My plan was to take the train up to NYC, work for ~10 hours, take the train back to D.C. after the event, and then take the Metro from Union Station to Shady Grove, where my parents would pick me up Sun. 10/5/25 early morning. Wild right? I was honestly not sure I had the energy to do all this. This was a super aggressive schedule, but I wanted to experience what the hackathon and tech scene was like in NYC. I also didn’t want to spend a fortune to attend the event, so I kept costs lean.

Looking back at the experience, I’m very glad that I went and I learned a lot. The event was hosted in the Datadog HQ, which is located in the middle of mid-town Manhattan. The people there were mostly NYC locals but there were people from everywhere, including people that flew in from the West Coast and Europe. What I remembered was that the space was at full capacity, and there were people that ended up not being able to attend the event. This was a lesson: always show up early, or the opportunity may be gone. Because of the lack of space, it was hard to network and do team formation. You basically ended up working with the people seated right next to you (which is often what happens at a hackathon anyway). I ended up working with two other D.M.V. people and one NYC person. We did a cybersecurity hack called RedBot, where we built an autonomous agent that would red-team chatbots to find vulnerabilities. The hackathon stipulated that we use three of the sponsor tools, therefore we integrated the tools ClickHouse and DeepL, but had trouble integrating the tool OpenHands. All the coding was vibe coded and we didn’t think that we had a compelling project. In the end to our surprise, we won the second place prize from ClickHouse and that came with a $125 Amazon gift card! Just unreal. I was really tired that day and it was the team effort that carried us to the finish line and to victory. That’s a lesson that I won’t forget for a long time: always surround yourself with good and supportive people and don’t settle for anything else! Overall, this was an awesome, well-organized event that had a fantastic lunch too, the famous Joe’s Pizza. This was a nice cultural addition to indoctrinate everyone into the NYC pizza culture.

I had a feeling on the train to NYC that I was going to do something special that day and that dream came true. It was a totally crazy travel schedule, but I don’t regret the decision to attend this NYC hackathon. I’m going to keep taking chances and always try my best. I felt good about last year and know that 2026 is going to bring even more adventures! I have to say I’m a little burnt out right now from work overall. Therefore I’m going to prioritize my rest and recovery in early 2026 and I know that I will get back to my full potential and energy real soon. After this event, I texted my family the following: “In America, all things are possible if one fights hard for it.” This is the spirit that I will carry forward all day, everyday.