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Jem Community Curator for The DEV Team

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Congrats to the DEV Weekend Challenge: Dog Days Edition Winners!

Data analysis dispels black dog syndrome myth

The results are in for our DEV Weekend Challenge: Dog Days Edition! Thank you for your patience while we worked through judging, and thank you for the volume and quality of what you sent us.

We asked you to build something for, about, or inspired by dogs ahead of International Dog Day. What came back was even cuter than expected: from an OS for dogs to several canine translators and a wide array of doggie dashboards. We had so much fun going through your submissions.

Now, let's celebrate our winners!

🎉 Congratulations To…

Overall Winner

@jonathansolvesstuff built a live board of every dog at Austin Animal Center with an intake record and no outcome record. After looking at the data, they concluded that "black dog syndrome" turned out to be a false flag. What sealed it for us was not only the care taken with the build, but also the thoughtful analysis of the data.

Best Use of Snowflake

@soumyadeepdey and @dronzer2code set out to catch a limp that a dog can't tell you about, using ten million rows of collar data from a wearable sensor. The trick is that a limp isn't one number going up, it's a pattern over time: walk, stop, walk a little, stop again, and averaging the day away erases exactly that pattern. He used Snowflake to search for that exact sequence directly in the data and pull out the specific seconds that gave it away, so every result comes with evidence attached.

Best Use of Solana

@kakeroth built ChainPaws to fix a genuinely rotten problem: when your dog goes missing, most of the "I found him!" messages you get are scammers trying to extort a reward. ChainPaws puts your dog's ID and the reward money on the Solana blockchain instead, so the payout only goes through once someone actually proves they found your dog, no wire transfers to strangers required. It's a real working smart contract with tests to back it up, not just a mockup of the idea.

Best Use of ElevenLabs

@abeera_lodhi took eight real shelter listings and had ElevenLabs read each one twice: once in a cheerful stock voice, and once in a voice built from scratch to match what's actually in that dog's file. Flip between the two mid sentence and you hear the gap between the marketing and the dog. A genuinely novel use of Elevenlabs technology, where abstract data manifests in something you can hear.

Best Use of Google AI

@vikram003 built Fetch'd, a swipe app for shelter adoptions with a twist: the dog gets a say too, not just the human. Gemini does two jobs behind the scenes, reading a scanned vet intake form into usable info, then comparing that against what an adopter says about their home to write one honest sentence about whether it's a good fit. No score, no percentage match, just a real observation, or a question back to you if there isn't enough info yet to say anything useful.

Prizes

All five winners will receive:

All participants with a valid submission will receive a completion badge on their DEV profile.

What's Next?

Two new challenges are on the way! Register for both so you don't miss the official announcements.

Sanity Challenge

September 18, 2026

The Sanity Challenge runs September 18 to October 4. Build an AI agent on structured content, or vibe-code an app with Sanity behind it. $2,500 in prizes. New to Sanity? Sanity is the AI Content Operating System. Your content lives in the Content Lake as JSON documents, with schemas you define in TypeScript and query with GROQ. You can use Sanity to build anything that you can imagine with structured content as your starting point.

We are thrilled to partner with Kaggle to bring the community a new challenge! Stay tuned by signing up so you don't miss the official announcement.

Top comments (30)

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francistrdev profile image
FrancisTRᴅᴇᴠ

Wof Wof (Congrats) @jonathansolvesstuff, @soumyadeepdey, @kakeroth, @abeera_lodhi, @vikram003!!!

Wof Wof Wof Wof wooooooooooooooooooof

(Great work and well deserved!)

@heyitsjem Wof

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manseer_saad_466feb8d0561 profile image
Manseer Saad

Wow bro is very good

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soumyadeepdey profile image
Soumyadeep Dey

Thanks broski

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heyitsjem profile image
Jem The DEV Team

These projects made me say bow-WOW 🐶

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soumyadeepdey profile image
Soumyadeep Dey • Edited

hey i have dropped a mail can you please look into that matter! june prize issue, would be grateful ! 😄

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heyitsjem profile image
Jem The DEV Team

I saw and I am monitoring! Congrats btw :)

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soumyadeepdey profile image
Soumyadeep Dey

yeah its been stuck soo long 😭 lowkey I'm waiting since june

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dj29 profile image
Dhruv Jani
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alexgeorgiev17 profile image
Alex Georgiev

Who let the dogs out!

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soumyadeepdey profile image
Soumyadeep Dey

Thanks @heyitsjem @jess @ben for choosing me!

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technogamerz profile image
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐳𝐲 𝐆𝐢𝐫𝐥

Congratulations 🎉❤️

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kakeroth profile image
Kanak Waradkar

Thank you to the DEV team for organizing this challenge. Congratulations to all the other winners on their builds. Building ChainPaws was a lot of fun. I am glad the focus on solving pet recovery scams resonated with the judges.

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varshithvhegde profile image
Varshith V Hegde

Congratulations to the winners

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fm profile image
Fayaz

Congrats to the winners! 🏆️🎉

Not an easy challenge to win.
Same goes to the judges: not an easy challenge to pick winners!

Congrats overall 🥰

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shubhradev profile image
Shubhra Pokhariya

Congrats everyone! 👏

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asx profile image
John

Congratulations to the winners , and thanks for my duck badge 🦆 😎

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vikram003 profile image
krishaant S.H

Thank you so much to the DEV team for organizing this amazing challenge I genuinely had fun building this project and congrats to all other winners !! 🐕️🐕️

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