Judging the Agent Glow Up Hackathon in San Francisco

What an experience judging the Agent Glow Up Hackathon with Build Club in San Francisco.

Teams were pushing the limits of what AI agents can do. The creativity and execution were next level. As someone building AI-powered QA agents at Bugster, I was looking for something specific: agents that are as thoughtful in their design as they are in their intelligence. Building AI that's powerful is one thing — building AI that people actually want to use is another. This hackathon was about closing that gap.

We've all used AI agents that are impressive under the hood but painful to actually interact with. I wanted to see builders who care about crafting AI experiences people genuinely enjoy.

The winners delivered exactly that:

• OfficeOS took first place with a brilliant take on agent-powered workspace management.
• GameJam came second with creative AI-driven game generation.
• Travel Agent rounded out the podium with an intuitive, agent-first travel planning experience.

Huge thanks to the sponsors who made this possible: Google, AdaL, Agora, Prefect, Exa, GMI Cloud, and WorkOS. The cash prizes, API credits, and demo exposure to 50K+ builders created real incentive for teams to go all in.

Being back in San Francisco for this event reinforced something I've been seeing from Córdoba, Argentina, building Bugster: the best product engineers don't just build smart systems — they build systems people want to use. That's the bar I set for our own AI agents at Bugster, and it's the bar I was judging by.

The AI agent space is evolving fast. The teams that win won't be the ones with the most sophisticated models — they'll be the ones who understand that user experience is the ultimate competitive advantage.