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Kane CLI Hack Day

KCTestMu AI
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when24 Oct 2026
whereSan Francisco
prize$5,000
priceFree
formatIn-Person
organiserTestMu AI

about this event

Build it with an agent. Verify it with Kane. A one-day, in-person hackathon for developers who build with AI coding agents, and want to see what happens when you put a real verification layer next to them. 50 builders. One room in San Francisco. $5,000 in prizes. Hosted by TestMu AI.

The Challenge: Build a working app with any AI coding agent. Use Kane CLI to verify it works. Ship by 6 PM. That's the whole brief. The app can be anything you want: a tool, a dashboard, a side project you've been meaning to start, a game, an internal utility, a weird experiment. The only constraints are: Kane CLI verifies the app, at a minimum at demo time. The strongest submissions wire Kane into the agent itself: a hook that fires Kane on save, an agent that reads Kane's NDJSON output and iterates, a spec that compiles down to Kane flows. It runs, it ships, and you can demo it live at the end of the day. You can work solo or in teams of up to four. Bring a laptop and your usual stack. Everything else is on us.

Before you arrive: Bring the agent you already use. Any AI coding agent works: CLI agents, IDE agents, chat-based agents, an MCP-driven setup, or one you built yourself. Have it installed and signed in before you show up. Install Kane CLI and run one flow. Run npm install -g @testmuai/kane-cli , then try one of the examples from the docs. If fifty people are doing fresh npm installs at 10:05 AM, the hackathon loses an hour. We'll send a cheat sheet with your confirmation email. You'll have free Kane CLI Pro access for the day, so don't worry about hitting limits during the event.

Prizes: $5,000 USD in cash, split across three winners. Every winner also gets the full perks stack. 1st Place $2,500. 2nd Place $1,500. 3rd Place $1,000. In addition to the cash, every winning team receives: A 1:1 with the TestMu AI founders, design partner status with input on the Kane CLI roadmap, 3 months of Kane CLI Pro, a featured post on the TestMu blog, a showcase feature on testmuai.com/kane-cli/showcase, and amplification across TestMu and dev.to channels.

when

October 24, 202609:30–20:00 PDT

Kane CLI Hack Day

One-day in-person hackathon. Build with an AI coding agent, verify with Kane CLI, ship by 6 PM.

◍ San Francisco, CA

tickets

Ticket types, prices and availability for Kane CLI Hack Day
ticketspriceFeeStatusdescription
Free AdmissionFreeTBAAvailableFree entry to the one-day AI Hackathon. Includes free Kane CLI Pro access for the day, food and drinks. Limited to 50 builders.

prizes

Prize places and values for Kane CLI Hack Day
#PRIZEprice
1st Place$2,500 cash plus full perks stack$2,500
2nd Place$1,500 cash plus full perks stack$1,500
3rd Place$1,000 cash plus full perks stack$1,000

faq

Which AI agent should I use?+
Whichever one you already build with. We're agent-agnostic. Terminal agents, IDE agents, browser agents, custom agents, MCP servers, multi-agent setups, all of it counts. Kane CLI is the required verification layer; everything above it is your call.
Which other AI tools can I use?+
Anything that helps you ship. There is no approved-tools list. Bring your own models, your own frameworks, your own scaffolding.
Do I need a paid Kane CLI plan to enter?+
No. Everyone selected gets free Kane CLI Pro access for the duration of the event. Winners get an additional three months on top.
Can I bring a project I've already started?+
You can build on existing work, but the Kane CLI integration has to happen during the day. At demo time, state what existed at 10 AM and what got added during the event. Judges will weight the new work.
Can I work solo?+
Yes. Solo entries are welcome, and so are teams of up to four.
Do I need to know Playwright or Selenium?+
No. Kane CLI is plain English: you describe the flow, Kane runs it. If you do know Playwright, the Playwright export feature is built in and useful for the writeup, but it isn't required.
What if my project breaks during demos?+
Test thoroughly before 5 PM. Submissions lock at the deadline, so you can't push fixes during demos. If your project depends on a third-party service, include a fallback such as a recorded run or a backup deploy so the judges can still see what you built.
Where do I ask questions during the event?+
TestMu engineers will be on the floor all day. There's also a #kane-hackday-sf Discord channel for fast questions.
Can I submit more than one project?+
One submission per team. If you want to build two things, build them with two teams.
Can I use Kane CLI alongside Playwright or Selenium?+
Yes. Kane sits next to existing test setups. Many strong submissions will use Kane for flows that never made it into a Playwright suite: the quick checks, the one-offs, the things that didn't justify framework setup. Playwright export is built in if you want to lock a flow in as code.
Kane CLI Hack Day24 Oct 2026 · San Francisco · $5,000
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