DEV Community: The DEV Team

Join the Hermes Agent Challenge: $1,000 in Prizes!

Jess Lee — Fri, 15 May 2026 16:06:18 +0000

If you've been watching the space, Hermes Agent probably needs no introduction. For everyone else, this is the open source agentic system that's been quietly turning heads as an option worth knowing. Built to run on your own infrastructure, Hermes Agent is capable of planning, tool use, and multi-step reasoning across complex tasks.

Running through May 31, the Hermes Agent Challenge is your chance to dig in firsthand. Whether you're already running Hermes Agent locally or you're curious what the buzz is about, this is the moment to build something real and show the community what's possible.

Whether you love to build or love to write, there's a prompt for you and $1,000 prizes up for grabs!

Let's get to it!

Our Prompts

Build With Hermes Agent

Your mandate is to build something useful or creative with Hermes Agent and share it with the community.

The possibilities are endless — you can build anything from an automated research pipeline to a multi-tool productivity assistant to a creative agentic experiment. What matters is that Hermes Agent is doing real work at the heart of your project.

Build With Hermes Agent Submission Template

The strongest submissions will incorporate Hermes Agent into their build in a meaningful way.

Write About Hermes Agent

Your mandate is to publish a post about Hermes Agent that educates, inspires, or sparks discussion. There's no single right format — what matters is that your post offers something genuine and useful to the community.

Not sure what to write about? Here are some ideas:

How-to guide: Walk through setting up and running Hermes Agent locally, connecting it to tools, or integrating it into a real project.
Comparison piece: Break down how Hermes Agent stacks up against other agentic frameworks and help readers decide when to reach for it.
Personal essay or opinion piece: Share your experience building with Hermes Agent, or make a case for something -- what does an open, capable agent system mean for the future of AI development?
Deep technical breakdown: Explore a specific capability like tool use, planning, or multi-step reasoning.

Write About Hermes Agent Submission Template

Note: If you are primarily showing off a project, please submit to the Build with Hermes Agent prompt instead! Each submission is only allowed to be eligible for one of the two categories.

Judging Criteria

Build With Hermes Agent submissions will be evaluated for:

Effective use of Hermes Agent's agentic capabilities
Technical implementation and code quality
Creativity and originality
Usability and user experience

Write About Hermes Agent submissions will be evaluated for:

Clarity and depth of explanation
Originality of perspective or insight
Practical value to the community
Quality of writing

Prizes

We’ll select four winners from each prompt.

Eight prompt winners will each receive:

$125 USD
DEV++ Membership
Exclusive DEV Badge

All participants with a valid submission will receive a completion badge.

Getting Started With Hermes Agent 🚀

Head to the Hermes Agent site to get started. From there you can explore the documentation, learn about its agentic capabilities, and find everything you need to hit the ground running.

GitHub Repo

NousResearch / hermes-agent

The agent that grows with you

Hermes Agent ☤

The self-improving AI agent built by Nous Research. It's the only agent with a built-in learning loop — it creates skills from experience, improves them during use, nudges itself to persist knowledge, searches its own past conversations, and builds a deepening model of who you are across sessions. Run it on a $5 VPS, a GPU cluster, or serverless infrastructure that costs nearly nothing when idle. It's not tied to your laptop — talk to it from Telegram while it works on a cloud VM.

Use any model you want — Nous Portal, OpenRouter (200+ models), NovitaAI (AI-native cloud for Model API, Agent Sandbox, and GPU Cloud), NVIDIA NIM (Nemotron), Xiaomi MiMo, z.ai/GLM, Kimi/Moonshot, MiniMax, Hugging Face, OpenAI, or your own endpoint. Switch with hermes model — no code changes, no lock-in.

A real terminal interface

Full TUI with multiline

…

View on GitHub

Helpful Links

How To Participate

In order to participate, you must publish a DEV post using the submission template associated with each prompt.

Please review our judging criteria, rules, guidelines, and FAQ page before submitting so you understand our participation guidelines and official contest rules such as eligibility requirements.

Important Dates

May 15: Hermes Agent Challenge begins!
May 31: Submissions due at 11:59 PM PDT
June 4: Winners Announced

Questions about the challenge? Drop them in the comments below.

Good luck and happy coding!!

What was your win this week?!

Jess Lee — Fri, 15 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000

👋👋👋👋
Looking back on your week -- what was something you're proud of?
All wins count -- big or small 🎉

Examples of 'wins' include:

Getting a promotion!
Starting a new project
Fixing a tricky bug
Meal prepped on Sunday and actually ate it (!!!!) 🍱

Happy Friday!

What was your win this week??

Jess Lee — Fri, 08 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000

👋👋👋👋
Looking back on your week -- what was something you're proud of?
All wins count -- big or small 🎉

Examples of 'wins' include:

Getting a promotion!
Starting a new project
Fixing a tricky bug
Making a dreaded phone call you'd been avoiding for weeks ☎️

Happy Friday!

Congrats to the OpenClaw Challenge Winners!

Jess Lee — Thu, 07 May 2026 21:27:14 +0000

The results are in! We are thrilled to announce the winners of the OpenClaw Challenge.

Over the past few weeks, you've been building, writing, and sharing your OpenClaw experiences with the community. Whether you were automating the mundane or tackling real-world infrastructure challenges, your submissions were a blast to review.

Selecting six winners from this pool of submissions was no easy task. Let's give a round of applause to our winners!

🎉 Congratulations To…

OpenClaw in Action Winners

@prema_ananda's WhiteHat is an autonomous ethical hacking agent that takes on the repetitive cycle of pentesting: scanning, reasoning, acting, and documenting, so you don't have to. A single SOUL.md file is what transforms the underlying LLM from a text generator into a methodical, principled penetration tester.

OpenClaw Challenge Submission 🦞

Prema Ananda

Apr 18

Building WhiteHat: An Autonomous Ethical Hacking Agent with OpenClaw

#devchallenge #openclawchallenge

Comments 2

6 min read

@lewisawe built KPLC Sentinel, a WhatsApp-based agent that analyzes prepaid electricity token purchase history to predict when a user's power will run out before it actually does. The result is a practical, real-world automation that solves a frustrating problem for anyone on a prepaid electricity plan.

OpenClaw Challenge Submission 🦞

Lewis Sawe

Apr 25

I Made My WhatsApp Predict When My Electricity Will Run Out with Openclaw

#devchallenge #openclawchallenge

Comments 1

8 min read

@jasmin used OpenClaw's persona files to build a multi-agent system where two AI agents can talk to each other with controlled, limited information. A markdown file acts as a privacy contract, determining exactly what each agent is and isn't allowed to reveal about its human.

OpenClaw Challenge Submission 🦞

Jasmin Virdi

Apr 26

I Taught Two AIs What Not to Say About Their Humans

#devchallenge #openclawchallenge #ai #programming

Comments 27

4 min read

Wealth of Knowledge Winners

@dannwaneri shares a hard-won lesson: don't let a misconfigured OpenClaw agent burn through $5,600 in API credits in a month due to a flawed assumption in a spec file. The post breaks down what went wrong and introduces a spec-writing habit that prevents runaway token costs before they start.

OpenClaw Challenge Submission 🦞

Daniel Nwaneri

Apr 22

OpenClaw Burned $5,600 of API Credits in One Month. Here's the Spec Habit That Prevents It.

#discuss #openclawchallenge #devchallenge

Comments 6

8 min read

@nirbhay_gautam_2a9e232b95 makes the case for why they are done trusting cloud-based AI tools with personal data, and how OpenClaw became the alternative. It's a sharp, personal essay about data ownership, the tradeoffs of convenience, and what it actually means to run AI on your own terms.

OpenClaw Challenge Submission 🦞

Nirbhay Gautam

Apr 17

I'm a Final-Year CS Student — And I'm Done Letting AI Tools Own My Data

#devchallenge #openclawchallenge

Comments 2

5 min read

@gramli walks through how to run OpenClaw locally using Windows Sandbox for secure, disposable isolation. The guide is practical and reproducible, making it a great reference for anyone cautious about running AI agents on their main machine.

OpenClaw Challenge Submission 🦞

Daniel Balcarek

Apr 27

Run OpenClaw Locally on Windows Using Windows Sandbox for Secure Isolation

#devchallenge #openclawchallenge #ai #tutorial

Comments 11

8 min read

Prizes

Each winner will receive:

$200 USD
DEV++ Membership
Exclusive DEV Winner Badge

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

What's Next?

The Gemma 4 Challenge is live! Whether you love to build or love to write, there's a prompt for you and a $3,000 prize pool up for grabs!

Announcing the Gemma 4 Challenge

Jess Lee for The DEV Team

May 6

Join the Gemma 4 Challenge: $3,000 prize pool for TEN winners!

#devchallenge #gemmachallenge #gemma

439

Comments 81

5 min read

Thank you for participating! See you next time. 🦞

Congrats to the Google Cloud NEXT '26 Writing Challenge Winners!

Jess Lee — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:48:04 +0000

The results are in! We are thrilled to announce the winners of the Google Cloud NEXT '26 Writing Challenge.

Your submissions covered a lot of ground: from building multi-step AI agents with Google ADK in a single day, to questioning what Google's 75% AI-generated code statistic actually means for developers, to exploring whether agents are the new microservices. We saw posts on GKE updates, cross-cloud data access, agentic compliance tooling, and even a beginner's honest account of navigating the Google Cloud maze for the first time.

The writing reflected a community grappling with what these announcements mean, not just summarizing the keynote, but asking what comes next. We loved reading every one of your submissions.

Now, let's get to our winners!

🎉 Congratulations To…

Google Cloud NEXT '26 Challenge Submission

ujja

Apr 27

I Rethought My Sustainability App After Google Cloud Next ’26 — and my architecture broke (in a good way)

#devchallenge #cloudnextchallenge #googlecloud #agents

Comments 2

4 min read

Google Cloud NEXT '26 Challenge Submission

Mettusella

Apr 28

Getting Started with Google ADK: Build a Multi-Agent System from Scratch

#devchallenge #cloudnextchallenge #googlecloud #ai

Comments

15 min read

Google Cloud NEXT '26 Challenge Submission

Fayaz

Apr 30

The 2026 Agentic Era with Gemini Agent Platform: Surviving Cascading Failures and Runaway Cloud Bills.

#devchallenge #cloudnextchallenge #googlecloud #ai

Comments 7

4 min read

Google Cloud NEXT '26 Challenge Submission

Viola Lykova

Apr 25

How is your IAM? | Google Cloud edition

#devchallenge #cloudnextchallenge #googlecloud

Comments 2

13 min read

Google Cloud NEXT '26 Challenge Submission

Sreejit Pradhan

Apr 29

Everyone's Talking About Gemini. The Real Story at Google Cloud NEXT '26 Was GKE Agent Sandbox.

#cloudnextchallenge #googlecloud #ai #devchallenge

Comments 5

7 min read

Prizes

Each winner will receive:

$200 USD
DEV++ Membership
Exclusive DEV Badge

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

What's Next?

The Gemma 4 Challenge is live! Whether you love to build or love to write, there's a prompt for you and a $3,000 prize pool up for grabs!

Announcing the Gemma 4 Challenge

Jess Lee for The DEV Team

May 6

Join the Gemma 4 Challenge: $3,000 prize pool for TEN winners!

#devchallenge #gemmachallenge #gemma

400

Comments 65

5 min read

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. See you next time! 💜

Join the Gemma 4 Challenge: $3,000 prize pool for TEN winners!

Jess Lee — Wed, 06 May 2026 22:44:16 +0000

Local AI is having a moment, and we want you to be part of it!

Running through May 24, the Gemma 4 Challenge invites you to explore open models. With the release of Gemma 4, Google's most capable open model family yet, we now have access to native multimodal capabilities, advanced reasoning, a 128K context window, and models that range from running on a Raspberry Pi, to phones, to powering large-scale deployments.

Whether you love to build or love to write, there's a prompt for you and a $3,000 prize pool up for grabs!

Read on to learn more.

Our Prompts

Build With Gemma 4

Your mandate is to build something useful or creative with any Gemma 4 model. The scope is wide open — you can build anything from an IoT integration to a multimodal tool to a long-context reasoning app. What matters is that Gemma 4 is doing real work at the heart of your project.

Build With Gemma 4 Submission Template

The most compelling submissions will make a clear case for why you chose the model you did and what that model unlocked.

Write About Gemma 4

Your mandate is to publish a post about Gemma 4 that educates, inspires, or sparks curiosity. There's no single right format — what matters is that your post offers something genuine and useful to the community.

Not sure what to write about? Here are some ideas:

How-to guide: Walk through setting up and running a Gemma 4 model locally, fine-tuning it for a specific task, or integrating it into a real project
Comparison piece: Break down the three Gemma 4 model variants and help readers decide which one is right for their use case
Personal essay or opinion piece: Share your experience building with Gemma 4, or make a case for something — what does a model this capable running locally mean for the future of AI?
Deep technical breakdown: Explore a specific capability like multimodal input, the 128K context window, or reasoning mode

Write About Gemma 4 Submission Template

Need inspiration? Check out how Google's own team fine-tuned Gemma 4 with Cloud Run Jobs. That’s the kind of hands-on, shareable knowledge is exactly what we're looking for.

Note: If you are primarily showing off a project, please submit to the Build with Gemma 4 prompt instead! Each submission is only allowed to be eligible for one of the two categories.

Which Model Is Right for You? 🤔

Gemma 4 model family spans three distinct architectures tailored for specific hardware requirements:

Small Sizes: 2B and 4B effective parameter models built for ultra-mobile, edge, and browser deployment (e.g., Pixel).
Dense: A powerful 31B parameter dense model that bridges the gap between server-grade performance and local execution.
Mixture-of-Experts: A highly efficient 26B MoE model designed for high-throughput, advanced reasoning.

No matter which you choose, judges will be looking for intentional model selection — show us why your model was the right tool for the job.

Prizes 🏆

Five winners from the “Build with Gemma 4” prompt will receive:

$500 USD cash prize
DEV++ Membership
Exclusive DEV Badge

Five winners from the “Write About Gemma 4” prompt will receive:

$100 USD cash prize
DEV++ Membership
Exclusive DEV Badge

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

Judging Criteria

Build With Gemma 4 submissions will be evaluated for:

Intentional and effective use of the chosen Gemma 4 model
Technical implementation and code quality
Creativity and originality
Usability and user experience

Write About Gemma 4 submissions will be evaluated for:

Clarity and depth of explanation
Originality of perspective or insight
Practical value to the community
Quality of writing

Getting Started With Gemma 4 🚀

Gemma 4 is open — you have several ways to get started, including completely free options:

Gemini API via Google AI Studio: Access Gemma 4 through the Gemini API.
Run locally (free, no credit card required): Download any Gemma 4 model directly from Hugging Face or Kaggle. The E2B model runs on high-end phones — or even a Raspberry Pi 5.
OpenRouter (free tier available): Access Gemma 4 31B via OpenRouter's free tier — no credit card required.

Important Dates

May 6: Gemma 4 Challenge begins!
May 24: Submissions due at 11:59 PM PDT
June 4: Winners Announced

We can't wait to see what you build and write! Questions about the challenge? Drop them in the comments below.

Good luck and happy coding!

What was your win this week?

Jess Lee — Fri, 01 May 2026 04:00:00 +0000

👋👋👋👋
Looking back on your week — what was something you're proud of?

All wins count — big or small 🎉

Examples of 'wins' include:

Getting a promotion!
Starting a new project
Fixing a tricky bug
Doing absolutely nothing all weekend and feeling zero guilt about it 🛋️

Happy Friday!

Announcing the Winners of the DEV Weekend Challenge: Earth Day Edition 🌍

Jess Lee — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:25:40 +0000

The time has come! We are thrilled to announce the winners of our second DEV Weekend Challenge: Earth Day Edition.

We were blown away by the creativity, craftsmanship, and care that went into your submissions. You gave the planet a voice through dashboards, AI tools, immersive simulations, and stories that made us think differently about our relationship with the natural world.

Thank you to everyone who participated. Now, let's celebrate our winners! 🎉

🏆 Congratulations To...

Overall Winners

Unearthed

@anchildress1 took us deep underground to examine the fossil fuel systems quietly powering our homes and cities. The post weaves together personal narrative and technical research to reveal the environmental cost hidden behind every flipped light switch. It's a sobering reminder of how much remains out of sight.

DEV Weekend Challenge: Earth Day

Ashley Childress

Apr 20

Unearthed—The Coal Mine Behind Every Light Switch

#devchallenge #weekendchallenge

Comments 8

11 min read

Last Breath

@_boweii built an app that uses sound to detect which species are vanishing from your local green spaces. The project combines audio recognition with ecological data to surface biodiversity loss in a way that's immediate and personal. It's a unique approach to environmental storytelling through audio.

DEV Weekend Challenge: Earth Day

Tombri Bowei

Apr 17

I Built an App That Listens to Your Garden and Tells You What's Disappearing. 🌍

#devchallenge #weekendchallenge

Comments 9

5 min read

Energy Leak Scout

@afreen_hossain_16f9999ebc built a home energy auditing tool that helps users identify where they're losing energy and money. The app is polished and well-documented, with a clear focus on making sustainability actionable for everyday people. We loved how it encourages positive changes with real financial incentive.

DEV Weekend Challenge: Earth Day

Afreen Hossain

Apr 20

Energy Leak Scout: Find the Waste. Cut the Bill.

#devchallenge #weekendchallenge

Comments

3 min read

CrowdCommand

@aashitanegii tackled a problem that doesn't get nearly enough attention: the enormous resource waste generated by large-scale events. CrowdCommand uses AI to model crowd movement and reduce inefficiencies in real time, from energy use to physical waste. It's an ambitious, well-executed project with clear potential for real-world deployment.

DEV Weekend Challenge: Earth Day

Aashita

Apr 18

CrowdCommand — AI Powered System to optimize crowd flow and reduce large-scale event waste

#devchallenge #weekendchallenge #ai #hackathon

Comments 2

3 min read

Prize Category Winners

Best Use of Backboard - Terra Triage

@arqamwd built an app where you snap a photo of an injured animal and the right licensed wildlife rehabilitator gets paged within 60 seconds. The secret is in the memory: every accept, decline, and "at capacity" response is written to Backboard, and that data directly re-ranks who gets contacted next — it's the core mechanism that makes the dispatcher smarter with every case.

DEV Weekend Challenge: Earth Day

Arqam Waheed

Apr 20

Terra Triage: I Built a 3-Agent Wildlife Dispatcher That Learns From Every Referral

#devchallenge #weekendchallenge #ai #backboard

Comments 3

9 min read

Best Use of Auth0 for Agents - GreenGate

@jtorchia built a sustainability auditing tool that puts the human firmly in the loop by requiring phone-based approval before any agent action is taken. The project makes clever use of Auth0's CIBA flow to create a secure and accountable agentic system. It's a compelling proof of concept for responsible AI agent design.

DEV Weekend Challenge: Earth Day

Juan Torchia

Apr 20

GreenGate: the agent proposes, the phone decides — building an Auth0 CIBA + Gemini audit for embodied carbon

#devchallenge #weekendchallenge #auth0 #agents

Comments 1

20 min read

Best Use of Google Gemini - EcoScan

@temiloluwavalentine built a tool that scans your devices and surfaces exactly which ones are consuming the most energy and driving up your bills. Gemini powers the analysis, turning raw usage data into clear, actionable insights for users. The result is a sharp, focused tool that makes energy waste visible in a way that actually motivates change.

DEV Weekend Challenge: Earth Day

Temiloluwa Valentine

Apr 19

# ⚡ EcoScan— See Which Device is Drinking Your Money

#devchallenge #weekendchallenge #earthday #gemini

Comments 3

3 min read

Best Use of Snowflake - SQLgo

@mohammad515253 approached sustainability from an unexpected angle: the carbon footprint of inefficient database queries. With Snowflake at the core of the data layer, SQLgo analyzes query patterns and redundant storage to help developers reduce computational waste. It's a clever reframe that makes sustainability relevant to anyone who writes code.

DEV Weekend Challenge: Earth Day

Mohammad Tejabwala

Apr 20

SqlGo🌱 - Save CO2 by optimizing queries and removing redundant storage

#devchallenge #weekendchallenge #gemini #webdev

Comments

3 min read

Best Use of GitHub Copilot - Planetary Pulse

@mamoor_ahmad built a sweeping Earth monitoring dashboard that pulls together environmental data from multiple sources into a single, unified view. Copilot handled Express route scaffolding, the animated CSS globe, the SVG health ring, the IPCC-calibrated carbon calculator logic, and responsive layout breakpoints, shaving an estimated 8.5 hours off the total build time. The post makes a compelling case for Copilot as a genuine force multiplier on ambitious solo builds.

DEV Weekend Challenge: Earth Day

Mamoor Ahmad

Apr 18

🌍 Planetary Pulse — AI-Powered Earth Dashboard with 6 Prize Tech Integrations

#devchallenge #weekendchallenge #hackathon #earthday

Comments 6

8 min read

Best Use of Solana - EcoLens

@arya_koste_5845807df94776 created a system for recording carbon reduction pledges on-chain, making climate commitments transparent and verifiable. An AI layer backs up each pledge with research and accountability tracking, so the promises people make are grounded in real data. It's an inventive use of blockchain for something that goes well beyond speculation.

DEV Weekend Challenge: Earth Day

Arya Koste

Apr 19

I Put Carbon Pledges on the Solana Blockchain for Earth Day (And Built the AI to Back It Up)

#devchallenge #weekendchallenge #solana

Comments

6 min read

Prizes

All ten winners will receive:

$100 USD
DEV++ Membership
Exclusive DEV badge

All participants with a valid submission will receive a completion badge. 🏅

What's Next?

Stay tuned for upcoming challenges by following this tag:

#devchallenge Follow

This is the official tag for submissions and announcements related to DEV Challenges.

We hope you had fun, felt challenged, and maybe added a thing or two to your professional profile.

See you next time!

Welcome Thread - v375

Sloan the DEV Moderator — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Leave a comment below to introduce yourself! You can talk about what brought you here, what you're learning, or just a fun fact about
yourself.
Reply to someone's comment, either with a question or just a hello. 👋

Come back next week to greet our new members so you can one day earn our Warm Welcome Badge!

DEV Community: The DEV Team

Join the Hermes Agent Challenge: $1,000 in Prizes!

Our Prompts

Build With Hermes Agent

Write About Hermes Agent

Judging Criteria

Prizes

Getting Started With Hermes Agent 🚀

GitHub Repo

NousResearch / hermes-agent

The agent that grows with you

Hermes Agent ☤

Helpful Links

How To Participate

Important Dates

What was your win this week?!

Top 7 Featured DEV Posts of the Week

What was your win this week??

Congrats to the OpenClaw Challenge Winners!

🎉 Congratulations To…

OpenClaw in Action Winners

Wealth of Knowledge Winners

Prizes

What's Next?

Congrats to the Google Cloud NEXT '26 Writing Challenge Winners!

🎉 Congratulations To…

Prizes

What's Next?

Join the Gemma 4 Challenge: $3,000 prize pool for TEN winners!

Our Prompts

Build With Gemma 4

Write About Gemma 4

Which Model Is Right for You? 🤔

Prizes 🏆

Judging Criteria

Getting Started With Gemma 4 🚀

Important Dates

Top 7 Featured DEV Posts of the Week

What was your win this week?

Announcing the Winners of the DEV Weekend Challenge: Earth Day Edition 🌍

🏆 Congratulations To...

Overall Winners

Unearthed

Last Breath

Energy Leak Scout

CrowdCommand

Prize Category Winners

Best Use of Backboard - Terra Triage

Best Use of Auth0 for Agents - GreenGate

Best Use of Google Gemini - EcoScan

Best Use of Snowflake - SQLgo

Best Use of GitHub Copilot - Planetary Pulse

Best Use of Solana - EcoLens

Prizes

What's Next?

#devchallenge Follow

Welcome Thread - v375

Top 7 Featured DEV Posts of the Week