Just one week after announcing that Harper is officially open source, we kicked off Harper Hack 2025, a two-week global hackathon inviting developers to explore what’s possible with Harper’s open source unified development platform.
This year’s hackathon stood out for one reason: the quality of what people created in just two weeks. The submissions were thoughtful, well-executed, and pushed Harper’s capabilities in exciting directions—from AI-driven interfaces to civic engagement tools.
Kicking Off with a New Perspective
Harper Hack 2025 opened with a live kickoff event featuring members of the Harper engineering team, who introduced judging criteria designed to reward both technical excellence and thoughtful design. The goal was to highlight how Harper’s open architecture—now fully available to the public—can empower developers to move faster, integrate AI more easily, and bring their ideas to life with less overhead.
Over the following two weeks, the Harper community came alive. Developers joined discussions in the Harper Discord, shared ideas, and helped each other troubleshoot and refine their projects. It was an inspiring display of collaboration and creativity built on nearly eight years of engineering work that has made Harper what it is today.
The Top Three Projects
From all the submissions, three projects rose to the top for their originality, execution, and meaningful use of Harper’s technology:
- AI Gesture Control by Charlie Gerard
Record custom hand gestures stored as vector embeddings in Harper, then use GenAI with Gemini to perform similarity search and control lights with live gesture data.
View on GitHub - ConvoIQ by Trent Ballard
An AI conversation intelligence platform that builds custom dashboards for any call—helping you track performance, surface insights, and get personalized coaching in real time.
View on GitHub - Mell by Josh Mack & Colin Williams
A community reporting app that lets users snap photos of local issues—like potholes, blocked sidewalks, or code violations—and send them directly to their city. Mell tracks progress, provides updates, and helps residents see their neighborhoods improve with every report.
View on GitHub
And the Winner Is...
After careful review by our judges, the grand prize went to Mell, created by Josh Mack and Colin Williams. The project stood out for its thoughtful design and real-world utility, blending Harper’s data storage and event-driven capabilities into an elegant, civic-minded solution.
Looking Back and Ahead
HarperHack 2025 showcased what can happen when technology meets community. From gesture recognition to AI-driven insight dashboards to neighborhood engagement tools, participants demonstrated just how versatile Harper’s open-source platform can be.
We’re deeply grateful to everyone who participated—from the developers who built and shared their projects, to the engineers who have spent years shaping Harper into a foundation worth building on.
This hackathon marks only the beginning. With Harper now open source, the creativity and innovation we saw over these two weeks are just a preview of what’s to come.
Thank you to everyone who made Harper Hack 2025 an incredible success. We can’t wait to see what you’ll build next.
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