Address
Pittsburgh, PA
Work Hours
Monday to Thursday: 9AM - 5PM ET
Friday: 9AM -1PM
“You made this session super-fun. And it was only an hour. Thanks for the opportunity -this was wonderful!”
Jayasri Guthula
Intro
We kicked off another Big Nerd Hackathon with a simple challenge: build a fully functional app in under an hour using AI.
About a dozen builders jumped into Lovable, and got to work. In just 45 minutes, they went from blank canvas to real, working products, solving actual problems, testing ideas, and pushing through the clock while Madi and I shared tips and helped troubleshoot along the way.
By the end, we had 8 standout builds to review. Madi and I gave feedback, awarded prizes, and honestly, it’s still a bit wild how much can get built in such a short amount of time.
🚀 Congratulations to our winners:
- First place: Jayasri Guthula, Textile inventory/bookkeeping system
- Second place: Nikola Djokovic, Hiking Trail Alert System
- Third place: Matt Hoelzel, Family Recipe Preservation
Caption: Video replay of the Big Nerd April Hackathon available on YouTube.
Session Breakdown
1. Brainstorming
First, everyone got set up in Lovable if they didn’t already have an account. Then it was go time.
Participants had just a few minutes to come up with an idea. It could be anything, as long as it met a few key criteria:
- Solves a real-world problem
- Helps people in a meaningful way
- Brings something original to the table
- Follows the directions
From there, they locked in and kept the scope intentionally small so they could ship fast.
Caption: A screenshot of the winning app, Khata, by Jayasri Guthula, a practical ledger with dashboard flair — a promising, very usable tool for small shops.
2. Prompting
Over the next few minutes, they translated their ideas into a simple build script, using a structured template to guide their Lovable app. Feel free to steal this prompt:
“Create an app for [this audience] that solves [this primary use case].
The app should include:
- Basic authentication (sign up, sign in, sign out)
- Feature 2 [short description of what it does and why it matters to the user]
- Feature 3 [short description of what it does and why it matters to the user]
- Feature 4 [short description of what it does and why it matters to the user]
Use Lovable Cloud for the backend and Tailwind for the frontend.
No 3rd party API dependencies.
Build the minimum viable version needed to demonstrate the idea.”
3. Building
They dropped their build scripts into Lovable and watched their apps come to life in real time.
Caption: A screenshot of the second place winnerTrail Triage, by Nikola Djokovic, a feel good app that turns casual hikers into an organized trail-fixing army..
4. Testing
Once Lovable finished building (about 5 minutes), participants jumped straight into testing. The focus wasn’t polish, it was making sure the core worked.
They followed a few simple guidelines:
- Don’t worry about visual polish yet
- Focus on core functionality
- A couple of small bugs are okay
- A broken workflow is not
They tested manually to avoid burning credits and focused on fixing anything that broke the core experience.
Caption: A screenshot of the third place winning app, Sapore, by Matt Hoelzel, a cozy, practical app with a lovable mission — preserving recipes and letting people share and tweak them.
5. Sharing
When participants were done testing and felt comfortable with their builds, they raised their hands (in Google Meet) to indicate they were ready to demo.
They had about 3 minutes each to share what they built and had to answer the following questions:
- Who is it for
- What problem does it solve?
- What is the core functionality? (show us)
Caption: A screenshot of a Where Do I Start?, by Kate Lundy, a friendly recommendation engine for anyone looking for a new music artist, video game, and more.
Caption: A screenshot of Brew Book by, by Chloe Jian, for coffee enthusiasts who want to track and discover beans and brews.
Caption: A screenshot of Aeon Essays, by Veronika Volkov, long, beautiful essays on philosophy, science, and being alive –in a Stumble Upon style.
Caption: A screenshot of My Digital Voice, by Omar Kella, provides a fast communication engine to help people we can’t speak.
Caption: A screenshot of Focus Flow, by Kai Nguyen, which aims to turn fuzzy study goals into clear, usable study plans.
6. Judging
Our AI-powered Idea Inspector agent judged the hackathon in real time. The agent recorded the demos and objectively evaluated them against the criteria in the instructions and a 8-factor rubric, which includes the following weighted categories:
- Real-World Problem (20%)
- Human Impact (20%)
- Originality (15%)
- Usability (15%)
- Feasibility (10%)
- Ethics (10%)
- Scalability (5%)
- Human score (5%)
The judge also provided feedback in the form of strengths and areas for improvement.
Finally, the app keeps track of the scores through a leaderboard, making it easy for Madi and I to track results. In this event we actually had a tie, so we were able to apply our human judgment to determine the outcome.
Reflection
The hackathons continue to be a huge success. We aim to create an engaging and welcoming environment and provide a ton of value, a safe space to learn, share, and ask questions, and the opportunity to walk away with an app you’re proud of, and potentially an awesome prize.
Thanks to all of our builders and congratulations again to our winners! Shoutout to Lovable Community Team for the continued support.
👉 We hope you join us at the next free event and look forward to seeing what you build next!
“The participants were very strong and it felt like I could learn a lot from them. I think that was one of the most valuable parts of the experience. What also worked really well was the live building format. It felt engaging and realistic and it was motivating to see ideas come to life quickly. The community aspect was strong and made it easier to stay inspired during the build.”
Kai Nguyen
