Joining Meta's Global Hackathon from Japan

Running the same week as developers around the world has been much more fun than I expected. These are my notes from the first half of joining Meta's global AI hackathon solo from Japan.

1. Introduction

The event is the Meta Global AI Developer Hackathon. It's fully online, running October 26 to November 4 (ET), with $1M in total prizes. I'm joining solo from Japan.

But I'm not exactly alone. I'm building together with my AI agent partner, which makes this a slightly unusual way to join.

During the event, developers all over the world are building at the same time. Just feeling that energy makes it worth joining.

2. Feeling Connected to the World

What I enjoy most is the feeling of being connected to the world. Participants are in all different time zones, so while East Asia is active during the day, the US and European chats move forward while I'm asleep.

When I wake up in the morning and open Discord, someone's project has moved forward overnight, or a discussion has heated up. To be honest, I haven't been able to take part in Discord much myself. Just watching it is fun.

The projects are so varied. Some people are making escape games from photos of a room, others are automating listing work for older adults. Seeing everyone's urge to build lined up at once is inspiring just to watch. It naturally pushes me to build something too. Even though our countries and languages are different, I feel the passion for making things is the same everywhere.

3. Official Sessions and Office Hours

At the kickoff, the event flow and tooling were introduced all at once to participants gathered from around the world. Hands-on live sessions are also being streamed.

In the hands-on session, what stuck with me was the idea of building a verification layer into agents. The idea is to embed checks into the tools in a way that can't be bypassed.

Personally, I'm most grateful for the office hours. There's a space where I can ask Meta engineers questions directly, so even though it's a global event, I don't feel any distance. Having a place like this where I can ask questions lets me reach further than I could by learning on my own.

4. My Project

My project is Trifecta Checker. It reads an AI agent's configuration and checks whether it forms a risky combination.

I don't leave the judgment to the mood of an LLM; I use a deterministic rule engine instead. My commitment is that the same input always gives the same result.

Your guide is the character Trafica. The public demo is here: https://meta-global-ai-hackathon-trifecta-c.vercel.app/

Note that this judgment is just a heuristic guide, and does not prove safety.

5. Wrap-up

Honestly, I'm not thinking much about the results. We build something interesting and show each other saying, "I made this." That alone makes this a fun event.

The demo is live now, so please try it out if you'd like. If you try it, I'd love to hear in the comments what worked and what didn't — that feedback goes straight into the next iteration. The submission deadline is 11:00 on November 5 JST, and all I have left is to finish the demo video and submission. I'll enjoy running through the second half to the end.

The official event page is here: https://cerebralvalley.ai/e/meta-ai-developer-hackathon

P.S.

I built this with Muse as my main agent, together with my AI partner Fuwatchi (Muse). The API connectivity and overall usability have been great. If you'd like to try it, my invite code is EOA1TR: https://muse.ai/join