Jem

for The DEV Team

Posted on Oct 23 AI-assisted

Congrats to the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle Winners!

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #hacktoberfest #softwaredevelopment

We're excited to announce the winners of the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle!

This week, we asked you to build something with open-weight models or open-source AI that someone would actually pay for. You delivered small, specific, useful tools for freelancers, small businesses, job seekers, and niche communities, and plenty of you went the extra mile to put your project in front of a real first user. We loved seeing how often running open models was what made the business work, whether that meant keeping costs low, keeping customer data private, or tuning for a niche that general-purpose APIs miss.

Thank you to everyone who participated. Now, let's celebrate our winners!

🎉 Congratulations To…

Overall Winner

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

Muhammad Murtuza Hussain

Oct 18

Job hunting became my side hustle, so I built Deis (Gemma 4) Tinder for jobs: swipe right, Gemma tailors your CV

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #gemma #opensource

14 min read

Featured Category Winners

Best Use of Render

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

Abeera Lodhi

Oct 18

Contains: I built an allergen checker for home bakers that says “I’m not sure” instead of guessing

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #machinelearning

16 min read

Best Use of TabPFN

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

Ibrahim Awab

Oct 14

pricecheck: my friend didn't know what to offer for a used monitor, so now he gets three numbers

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

11 min read

Best Use of Tinker

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

Heet Ranpura

Oct 18

I stopped asking AI to count. Now it catches 95.6% of the mistakes in crochet patterns, on a laptop

#devchallenge #ai #hf26challenge #opensource

16 min read

Best Use of Arduino

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

k66 (Lana Chen)

Oct 18

LLMs Have No Nose, So We Built One: an AI Nose on the Arduino UNO Q

#devchallenge #hf26challenge

9 min read

Best Use of DigitalOcean

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

Reet Singh

Oct 18

“Simple site hai, 15k mein ho jayega na?” I built Panga so freelancers stop saying yes too fast

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #opensource #ai

17 min read

Best Use of Gemma

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

Rohit Purkait

Oct 18

'Kal' means yesterday and tomorrow. I built home bakers a WhatsApp order sheet that never guesses which.

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

10 min read

Partner Category Winners

Best Use of Backboard

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

Anish Kumar

Oct 17

ReplyDesk: a 4B model that answers Google reviews and stops promising refunds it can't give

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

11 min read

Best Use of ElevenLabs

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

Priyanshu Purohit

Oct 18

Auditly: the shopkeeper talks, the ledger writes itself

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

8 min read

Best Use of Entire

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

Aun Raza

Oct 19

NetCortex

#devchallenge #hf26challenge

8 min read

Best Use of GitHub Copilot

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

Vinmay Nair

Oct 17

ClearToList: Is that thrift find recalled? A photo check against CPSC recalls with Gemma 4

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

9 min read

Best Use of Mastra

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

Ansh Varshney

Oct 18

ParcelProof: the customer's voice note says the box was empty. Gemma checks it against the receipts, then reads you the case.

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

8 min read

Best Use of MongoDB Atlas

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

Taminoturoko Briggs

Oct 18

DocScout: find open-source API docs you can contribute to, picked by Gemma

#devchallenge #hf26challenge

6 min read

Best Use of Sentry Agent Tracing

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

Bipul Chamoli

Oct 16

"red label adha kg 2 box": an offline WhatsApp order reader for Indian shops that asks before it guesses

#ai #devchallenge #hf26challenge #opensource

9 min read

Best Use of SerpApi

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

Subarna Maity

Oct 17

We Searched eBay for 237 Recalled Products. Only 45 of 12,562 Listings Named the Model.

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

20 min read

Best Use of a .tech Domain

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

Antonia Herrera

Oct 18

My beautician can't answer the phone when her hands full, so I built her a Gemma 4 receptionist

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #ai #opensource

15 min read

Best Use of Temporal

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

Bowen Rui

Oct 15

chaptermill: a podcast's back catalog to show notes for 3¢ an audio hour, on an old PC I kept crashing on purpose

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #temporal #opensource

9 min read

Best Use of Tiger Data

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

Kartik Agnihotri

Oct 18

Perforvisor: a 5★ review said "Needs to be more clean." Open models caught it.

#hf26challenge #devchallenge #opensource #ai

10 min read

Prizes

Overall winner: $250 USD, a DEV++ membership, and an exclusive DEV badge
Featured category winners: $200 USD and an exclusive DEV badge each
Partner category winners: $100 USD and an exclusive DEV badge each

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 3: Slow and Steady is live right now, with $2,850 in prizes across 21 winners. There's still time to jump in:

Jem for The DEV Team

Oct 19

Join the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge: Slow and Steady! $2,850 in Prizes Across 21 Winners.

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #hacktoberfest #productivity

153

7 min read

Week 4 kicks off Monday, October 26. Sign up now so you don't miss the theme reveal:

The Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge: Week 4 runs October 26 to October 31. Build something spooky, or something that honors the past in the spirit of Día de los Muertos, with open-weight models or open-source AI. $2,850 in prizes across 21 winners. This is the final challenge of our Hacktoberfest series. This year's Hacktoberfest is all about building brand-new projects with open-source AI and open-weight models, and the theme is intentionally broad, so interpret it however you'd like!

Happy Hacktoberfest, and congrats again to all of our winners! 🎃