AI Hackathon Scheduled Pipeline opened issue #1: Welcome to the AI Hackathon 🎉 at GitLab AI Hackathon / Participants / psps2021rate

AI Hackathon Scheduled Pipeline
2026-03-25T14:28:12Z

Hey @psps2021rate — you're in!

Your project is set up and ready to go, so you can get cracking right away.

Use this issue as your checklist + quick links.

Checklist for a successful hackathon ✅

Join Discord and say hi in #ai-hackathon.

Read the challenge.

Form a clear idea.

Decide whether to team up.

Get started.

Iterate and read further technical resources.

Process walkthrough video

(click to expand)

The challenge 🎲

Anything that removes friction from the software development lifecycle. Automate security fixes. Streamline code reviews. Generate compliance reports. Flag risks before they become problems.

The best submissions will tell a story: here's the pain, here's how the agent solves it, here's what changes for developers.

Chat alone won't qualify. We want to see agents that react to triggers and take action.

At least one custom public agent or public flow should be created.

Ideas 💡

See the playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjdUkKbmvoY&list=PL05JrBw4t0Kq5vFCEQLrowmwGGi5YmCJK

VueJS Unit Test Writer — generates unit tests for Vue.js components.

Issue Triage — helps categorize and prioritize issues automatically.

Documentation Writer — creates docs using the Knowledge Graph.

Security Sentinel — CLI agent that monitors and flags security concerns.

OpenTofu Expert — helps with Infrastructure as Code.

Jenkins Migration — helps migrate Jenkins pipelines to GitLab CI.

See further examples in our prompt library.

Team up 👥

Teaming up is half the fun - and you can give other approved participants access to your project in a few quick steps.

Go to https://contributors.gitlab.com/ai-hackathon and log in with your GitLab account.

Fill in the username of the team member you want to invite.

The team member gets access to your project, and an e-mail to confirm.

Help + community 🤝

Discord: ask questions and get help in #ai-hackathon.

Devpost Discord: find people to team up with.

Office hours: live troubleshooting + brainstorming (schedule posted on Discord).

Get started 📌

Set your Default GitLab Duo namespace to GitLab AI Hackathon. Without this, you will not be able to test out your agent/flow.

Build your idea

There is an agent and flow template in your project to help you get started.

The quickest way to get started is by using the Web IDE.

Replace the placeholders in the relevant template.

Remove the .template extension.

Commit your changes.

A CI pipeline will run which indicates if your agent/flow configurations are valid. If the pipeline fails, correct any issues (or reach out in Discord for support).

Create a tag to add your agent/flow to the public catalog, and enable it in your project.

If you need to refer back to the templates later, you can see the originals in the participant template.

Test your agent

Note

You can skip this section if you have not created an agent.

You can chat with your agent:

in the GitLab Duo sidebar, by creating a New GitLab Duo Chat and selecting your agent from the list.

in one of the available extensions.

Test your flow

Note

You can skip this section if you have not created an flow.

Your flow will be given a user identity in the form @ai-flow-name-gitlab-ai-hackathon.

You can trigger your flow in an issue or merge request in your project by:

assigning the @ai- user.

mentioning the @ai- handle in a commnet (along with any additional instructions).

Iterate 🔄

Keep refining your agent/flow until you are happy:

Commit changes to the agent/flow yml.

Create a new tag.

Test the agent/flow.

Explore these technical resources:

Get started with GitLab Duo Agent Platform: The complete guide.

GitLab Duo Agent Documentation.

GitLab Duo Flows Documentation.

Flow schema documentation.

Explanation of the different tools.

Join our agent research study 📝

Help shape the future of agent development.

Join our research study - share your experience building AI agents through short weekly check-ins, and receive GitLab swag credits for your contribution.

Take this 2-minute screener to see if you qualify.