About the challenge

The internet connected everyone and somehow made it harder to meet anyone. You have thousands of contacts and no idea which one can change your year. Warm Intros is one evening to build the fix.

Hosted by Series - the first AI social network with Hook 'em Hacks and localhost:nyc, this is a speed hackathon at Series HQ in Chelsea, NYC. The best founders, engineers, designers, and operators walk in at 5:00 PM. Teams form by 6:00. At 8:30 PM, code freezes. At 8:45, finalists get two minutes on stage and one question from a judge.

Series is rebuilding the social network as a conversation instead of a scroll: you text an AI who you are and who you want to meet, and it makes the introduction. That's the spirit of the night. We want AI products that create real human connection — that introduce, match, vouch, gather, or turn "we should hang" into something that actually happens.

What we're looking for: a working prototype someone can use in front of us. Rough edges are fine. A real interaction is not optional.

What we're not looking for: slide-only concepts, pre-built side projects with a new name, or a landing page for a product that doesn't exist yet. 

Get started

Your challenge: build an AI-powered product that creates real human connection, and get it working in under three hours.

Team size is 2–4. Come solo and we'll match you on site. Pick a narrow slice and make one interaction genuinely good - the winning projects at speed hackathons are almost never the most ambitious ones, they're the most finished ones.

Starting points to steal from:

  • The intro layer — an agent that reads two people's context and writes the introduction neither of them would have made
  • Serendipity engines — surface the person in someone's existing network they didn't know they needed, and explain why
  • Post-feed social — a social product that lives in iMessage, voice, email, or an ambient interface instead of a scroll
  • Community OS — tooling for the people who run group chats, cohorts, clubs, and coworking spaces: onboarding, matching, memory, follow-up
  • Trust and taste — vouching, reputation, or matching people on something richer than a résumé
  • IRL conversion — the unglamorous problem of getting from a warm DM to two people in a room on a Tuesday
  • 🎯 Series Challenge — build for the Series ecosystem: its community, its platform, or the physical space you're standing in
Schedule

 

Time Activity
5:00 PM Check-in, food, networking, Series HQ space tour
5:30 PM Welcome, format, rules, and judging criteria
5:45 PM Team formation and idea selection
6:00 PM Building begins — mentors on the floor
8:30 PM Code freeze, Devpost submissions close
8:45 PM Finalist demos — 2 minutes each + 1 judge question
9:45 PM Awards
10:00 PM Networking

Requirements

What to Build

Build a working AI-powered prototype that creates real human connection — introductions, matching, community, trust, or getting people together IRL.

Requirements:

  • Built during the event. All code, design, and copy is created between 6:00 PM and 8:30 PM on Monday, August 18, 2026. Boilerplate, open-source libraries, component libraries, and starter templates are fine. Pre-existing projects are not.
  • Live and usable. A judge or a stranger must be able to interact with it. Deployed on the web, running locally, or a functioning mobile/messaging interface — all acceptable.
  • Teams of 2–4. Solo builders are matched into teams at 5:45 PM.
  • AI tools encouraged. Claude, Cursor, Lovable, v0, Copilot — use whatever gets you to a working product. The idea and the creative direction must be yours.
What to Submit

Submit on Devpost by 8:30 PM ET on Monday, August 17, 2026:

 

  1. Project name and a one-line description
  2. Explain your product/prototype in one sentence.
  3. What is your team name?
  4. What you built and why — the problem, your approach, and what's actually working vs. mocked (be honest; judges respect it)
  5. Link to the live demo or prototype — deployed URL, TestFlight link, phone number to text, or repo with run instructions
  6. Link to your GitHub repo (public or judge access)

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

1 non-cash prize
Winner
1 winner

Interview with Series, credit prizes!

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Somya Gupta

Judging Criteria

  • Design (out of 5)
    Is it usable, considered, and polished for a one-day build?
  • Uniqueness of Idea (out of 5)
    Does this take a fresh angle on social media/connection or solve a problem others have overlooked?
  • Technical Execution (out of 5)
    Does it actually work? How much did the team genuinely build during the sprint?
  • Real-World Impact (out of 5)
    Does it solve a real world social connection problems?

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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