DEV Community

Cover image for Congrats to the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine Winners!

Congrats to the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine Winners!

Jem on November 13, 2026

The results are in for the final week of our Hacktoberfest DEV Challenges! For Ghost in the Machine, we asked you to build something spooky, or som...
Collapse
 
heyitsjem profile image
Jem The DEV Team •

Congratulations to our Overall winner, @mzee04! 🏆

And a huge congrats to our featured category winners: @srgcy (Render), @malbolged (TabPFN), @derbyps (Tinker), @abhinavkrishna3211 (Arduino), @tanmaygajjar26 (DigitalOcean) and @tushar_shah (Gemma)! 🎉

Thank you all for closing out Hacktoberfest with such haunting builds. 🪦

Collapse
 
mzee04 profile image
Toyyib Olamilekan •

Thank you so much, Jem and the DEV team! Writing that diary experiment was one of the most fun builds I've done. Huge congrats to @srgcy, @malbolged, @derbyps, @abhinavkrishna3211, @tanmaygajjar26 and @tushar_shah, and I'm off to read all your entries now! 👻

Collapse
 
tushar_shah profile image
tushar shah •

Thanks and cheers to all the folks

Collapse
 
francistrdev profile image
FrancisTRᴅᴇᴠ •

Congrats to the final week of HacktoberFest!

Good work all of you!

Collapse
 
anamdev profile image
Anamul Hoque •

Congratulations to all the winners! 🎉

Huge congrats to @mzee04 for the Overall win, and to every featured and partner category winner. The range this week was wonderful, from a tiny AI keeping a diary to ghost stories mapped across Ireland.

Thank you to the DEV Team and all the partners for hosting such a creative month. This was my first Hacktoberfest challenge series, and building Ghost Tales taught me a lot about open-source AI. I'm off to read the winning entries and learn from them.

See you in the next challenge! 👻

Collapse
 
mzee04 profile image
Toyyib Olamilekan •

Thanks man! I appreciate it!

Collapse
 
hanzla profile image
Hanzla Baig •

Congrats @mzee04, @srgcy, @malbolged, @derbyps, @abhinavkrishna3211, @tanmaygajjar26 and @tushar_shah! Well deserved, everyone! 🎉❤️

Collapse
 
tushar_shah profile image
tushar shah •

Thanks and cheers to rest all

Collapse
 
nyaomaru profile image
nyaomaru •

Congrats to all the winners!! 😸🎉

Collapse
 
hanzla profile image
Hanzla Baig •
Collapse
 
finallyjay profile image
Jose Antonio Granero •

Thank you so much!! 🙌

Collapse
 
heyitsjem profile image
Jem The DEV Team •

Congrats to our partner category winners! 🎉👻

@bin4yi (Auth0 for AI Agents), @vrranjith (Backboard), @ronaksarda (Browserbase), @finallyjay (ElevenLabs), @thy_orion (Entire), @emarc99 (GitHub Copilot) and @hongpengtan0max (Mastra), amazing work!

Collapse
 
ronaksarda profile image
Ronak sarda •

Thank you soo very much team 🫡🫡🫡

Collapse
 
emarc99 profile image
Aroso Emmanuel •

Thanks to the awesome DEV team for hosting the fest and challenges!

Collapse
 
finallyjay profile image
Jose Antonio Granero •

Wow, thank you so much! This is such a nice surprise! 😊

Collapse
 
muhammadmurtuzahussain profile image
Muhammad Murtuza Hussain •

Congratulations all, great run!

Collapse
 
heyitsjem profile image
Jem The DEV Team •

More partner category winners to celebrate! 🎃🌼

@carlosjcastrog (MongoDB Atlas), @bladeharper_ec7070d6e28be (Sentry Agent Tracing), @kakeroth (SerpApi), @mohamedaminehamdi (Temporal), @workstationritalks (Tiger Data), @kourtneylee1611 (Ultramarine) and @samarth_kumble_a91ad88634 (.tech Domain), congratulations!

Collapse
 
carlosjcastrog profile image
Carlos José Castro Galante •

Thank you so much, Jem, and thanks to the whole DEV team! Linkmortem was built in five intense days, and seeing it recognized for MongoDB Atlas means a lot to me. Congrats to all the other winners! 🎃🙌

Collapse
 
fm profile image
Fayaz •

Congrats all the winners 🏆
and best wishes to all those who participated 🥰

Collapse
 
hanzla profile image
Hanzla Baig •
Collapse
 
ronaksarda profile image
Ronak sarda •

Congratulations to all the winners 🎊

Collapse
 
earlgreyhot1701d profile image
Earl Grey •

Wow, on these entries! So creative. I appreciate all of the talented builders here. They're inspiring. Contracts to all of the winners @mzee04, @srgcy, @malbolged, @derbyps, @abhinavkrishna3211, @tanmaygajjar26 and @tushar_shah !

Collapse
 
tanmaygajjar26 profile image
Tanmay Gajjar •

Thanks and congrats to each and everyone who achieved this!

Collapse
 
tushar_shah profile image
tushar shah •

Thanks and cheers to all

Collapse
 
varshithvhegde profile image
Varshith V Hegde •

Congratulations to all the winners 🎉🏆

Collapse
 
soumyadeepdey profile image
Soumyadeep Dey •

atleast i wanna win once, please god! @heyitsjem 😭

Collapse
 
devkursat profile image
Kürşat Yılmaz •

The obsession with wrapping remote APIs into multi-layered agent abstractions is creating massive hidden latency and failure cascades in production.

If you profile real-world workloads, bare-metal local inference (via direct C++ / llama.cpp or vLLM bindings) consistently beats fragile cloud wrappers on both predictability and cost. Tooling should eliminate abstraction penalties, not compound them.

Collapse
 
luciaw profile image
Lucia W •

Congratulations! 😃

Collapse
 
gracelee087 profile image
Sohee Lee •

Huge congrats to all the winners! Such a creative idea! 👏🎉

Collapse
 
hemapriya_kanagala profile image
Hemapriya Kanagala •

Big congrats to all the winners 😀