Hacktoberfest x CruzHacks (Hack Day Santa Cruz)
About
Come join CruzHacks at UC Santa Cruz for a fun afternoon of hacking! Whether you’re a first time hacker, an experienced hacker, Baskin or non-Baskin major, CruzHacks is the place to be to learn new technologies, meet other solution-driven students, and win cool prizes with breakthrough projects!
Prize Categories
3 categories- View Best Use of Gemma 4DDeepmind Google
Best Use of Gemma 4
It’s time to see how much you can build with a lightweight, open model. Gemma 4 packs multimodal intelligence into an open-weights model that you can access through the Gemini API. So, what can Gemma 4 bring to your project?
- Multimodal Experience: Work with text and images to create an assistant that understands more of what users share.
- Focused AI Tools: Build a focused AI tool for learning, creativity, productivity, or your community.
- Rapid Prototyping: Experiment with an open model while using the Gemini API to move quickly from an idea to a working prototype.
Bring your idea to life… what will you build with Gemma 4 today?
Build with Gemma 4View category - View Best Open-Source AI Project
Best Open-Source AI Project
Exclusive Hacktoberfest 2026 Winner DEV Badge & MLH Swag Bag
Build an original project that uses open-source or open-weight AI as an important part of how it works. Teams could create an agent skill, build with an open-weight large or small language model, or build or adapt an open-source model harness. These are examples within one challenge, and teams may combine them.
Open-source or open-weight AI must be an important part of the project.
The project must be published in a public GitHub repository and use an open-source license.
An agent skill must comply with the Agent Skill Open Standard.
A model-harness entry must include an original implementation or meaningful changes to an existing open-source harness.
Build with DigitalOceanView category