Lantern's P&T AI hackathon. Two days, five teams, unlimited agents. Five ideas from the business, one goal — ship something real.
Submit your projectWhy
Every idea on the floor this week came from the business — 30 gathered, 10 shortlisted, 5 we build. Each team spends two days turning theirs into something real: production-ready implementations, not slideware.
Details
July 21–22, 2026Kickoff 8:00 AM both days. Demos Wednesday 3:30 PM.
Vancouver, BCHosted by John & Renjith. Backed by HeadStart and Insight Partners.
5 teams, drafted livePick order shuffled live on Day 1 — teams draft their idea from the Top-10 shortlist. One repo, one demo, one shot at the stage.
A laptop and opinionsSplit roles or split tasks — PM, engineers, QA — then run the agentic SDLC to deploy.
Schedule
Welcome & kickoff John, Renjith · 30 min
HeadStart — the way we build Nicole, HS team · 30 min
Orient & set up Architecture & hardening review, team announcements, live draft.
Build session 1 Planning & prototypes · 2 hrs
Working lunch Insight Partners presents: AI in the industry
Build session 2 4.5 hrs. Agents start typing.
Day 1 stand-up Renjith · 30 min
Team dinners Four separate groups.
Kick off day two John, Renjith · 30 min
Build session 3 4 hrs
Lunch break
Build session 4 Final 2 hrs. Merge it or lose it.
Project demos All teams · live, no slides.
Wrap up & awards John, Renjith
Dinner Day 2 Glasses up. Lights on.
Rules of engagement
Spend your time on the model, the logic, the judgment — not glue code a template could give you.
Build it the way you'd want to inherit it — because someone might have to.
Ship the smallest working slice first, then layer on — don't disappear for two days and hope.
Trust the idea's champion on what matters — trust your team on how to build it.
Judging
Does it solve a real Lantern pain point? Quantifiable value, a path to adoption, compliance-aware where it matters.
Built the way you'd want to inherit it — sane structure, right-sized tech, robust, secure.
AI at the core, not bolted on. Smart model and tool selection — and judgment on when not to use it.
$5,000 first · $2,000 second · $1,000 thirdPlus a $10K bonus for any idea that ships to production and proves value — judged by JZ.
lantern submit --project
Submit your repo, session logs, and project details. Deploys land on your team subdomain automatically.
Demo or it didn't happen.