Run a Coding Jam in your city.
Hosting a Coding Jam is one of the best ways to connect the builders in your community — a room of developers leaves with a working app, a new collaborator, and someone to text the next time they get stuck. Bring the room; the kit brings the rest. From planning to execution in 2 weeks.
Get every build submitted before people leave.
It takes each person about two minutes and it is the single highest-value thing you do all session. Once everyone walks out it never happens — half-finished prototypes go home on laptops and nobody sees them again.
- →Your chapter shows up on the hero board and the country map.
- →Every build is credited to your jam and to you as the lead.
- →Builders earn badges, and get a page they can send to their manager.
- →You get real numbers for the write-up and the chapter KPI.
A pre-flight checklist.
What people install depends on which tool they bring, so the checklists live with the tools. Link the right one in your event description — half the workshop time is otherwise lost to setup. Drop-ins without the prereqs are still welcome; pair them with a TA.
Tip: pin the link in the RSVP email 48 hours before doors open, and re-share at T-2 hours. Point undecided people at the picker on the home page.
Antigravity, Git and a Gemini API key — plus uv, Node and disk-space extras. For anyone bringing a laptop they already code on.
See the checklist →A browser and a Google account. For everyone who’d rather not install anything — which is a preference, not a limitation.
See the checklist →Your job, not theirs. Recommended when running an official GDG event — Google Cloud credits cover API spend and tie to the chapter KPI. Note they only apply to the Antigravity path, which bills through a Cloud project; anyone on AI Studio uses its free tier and needs nothing from you. Skip this entirely for casual jams.
Ask the Developer Communities team at na-developer-communities@google.com. Give them a date, a headcount and your GCP project ID — the draft below has the shape they expect.
Present, then submit.
Two things happen at the end of a jam, and rooms reliably do the first and forget the second. Budget for both — put them on the schedule you show the room at the start.
Get people presenting
Three volunteers, two minutes each, screen-shared from where they’re sitting. No slides, no stage.
- ·Ask for volunteers at the halfway mark, not at the end. People say yes more readily when the demo is still hypothetical.
- ·Pick a broken one on purpose. A build that half works gives everyone else permission to show theirs.
- ·Ask each presenter the same question: what surprised you? That answer is what the room remembers, and it’s a field on the submit form.
Then everyone submits
Not just the presenters — everyone, including the people whose build barely runs. Do it in the room, together, before anyone packs up.
- ·Put your jam’s submit link on the projector and leave it there. Every jam page has one that pre-fills the jam, so nobody picks the wrong thing.
- ·Say out loud that half-finished is fine. Most people assume the showcase is for polished work and quietly opt out.
- ·Screenshot required, repo and demo optional — remind them so nobody stalls hunting for a live URL they never deployed.
- ·One submission per person per day, so it has to happen on the day.
Everything in the box.
Eight ready-made kits, one per track. Each ships with a starter repo and a codelab, so you facilitate and the kit handles the rest. Pick any one to host — they’re independent, and there’s no order to work through.
Use a ready-made kit
Eight topics, each already scoped to ship inside 45 minutes. Open one, read the brief, and put its name in your event description. Nothing to write.
Browse the eight kits →Or bring your own topic
Got a dataset, a codelab of your own, or an idea that fits your community better? Set up a jam page for it in a couple of minutes — title, tagline, your links, done.
Create your own jam →Scaffolded folder with context/, helper prompts, and pre-flight scripts. No solution code — participants build their own version.
A step-by-step guide that gets a participant from zero to a working app in 45 minutes. Drop-in friendly. Tested before doors open.
The deck to run the room from — intro, the build, the wrap-up. Coming soon; the link lands here when it's ready.
TBD. Drop the link in app/organizer/page.tsx once the deck exists and this note becomes a button.
Two hours. Four movements.
We keep the talking short and the building long. Organizers facilitate; the room creates. This shape repeats across every track — it’s the muscle memory.
Most of the two hours is Build, and it’s deliberately loose — the agent does the typing, participants decide what it’s making. The codelab is there for anyone who wants a structured route through it, not a script the room has to follow.
Pre-warm the deploy target by pushing a hello-world before doors open. The first deploy of the night is usually the slowest.
Your demo is your most important deliverable. Practice it once on the morning of, with the actual production stack you’ll use on stage.
- 0:00 – 0:15Intro
Grab a name tag and a slice, say hello to the instructor, and meet the people either side of you — you'll be asking them things later, so it pays to know their names now. Low pressure, high creativity, ship something messy. Then a quick word on what the room is building tonight, and you're off.
- 0:15 – 0:30Credits & setup
The instructor shares the Google Cloud credits with the room. Everyone gets their environment ready — whichever tool they brought. Nobody should be installing anything once the build starts.
- 0:30 – 1:35Build
Heads down, and enjoy it — this is the part everyone came for. The agent does the typing; you decide what it's making. Ask the room when you get stuck; someone two seats away hit the same wall ten minutes ago. Want more structure? The codelab walks the spec-driven route — Setup → Plan → Review → Build → API → Verify — but nobody has to follow it.
- 1:35 – 2:00Share & submit
Show the room what you made — two minutes, screen-shared from your seat. Half-finished is welcome; the wobbly ones are usually the most interesting. Say what surprised you along the way, and cheer for everyone else while you're at it. Then submit your build before you leave. This is the one thing not to skip — it's what puts your name and your chapter on the showcase, and it takes about two minutes.
A four-phase rhythm, every track.
Set the tone and introduce tonight's topic. Keep it short — the room is here to build, not to watch.
Share the Google Cloud credits, then everyone gets their tool ready — AI Studio in the browser, or Antigravity locally. Nobody should be installing once the build starts.
Keep it loose and let the room enjoy it. You and the TAs circulate — unblock, don't code for them. Anyone who wants structure can follow the codelab's spec-driven route.
Volunteers screen-share what they built, then everyone submits it to the showcase. Both halves matter — see below.
Spec-driven design.
The codelab runs ~48 minutes of structured time + ~20 minutes of slack for help, iteration, and polish. Total ~75 minutes inside the 60–70 minute Build window with room to breathe.
Install Antigravity, clone the starter, init the environment.
Spec conversation generates three docs: PRD, UI/UX, engineering + tests.
Read the docs. Leave inline comments. Iterate until approved.
Antigravity generates the app and tests. Auto-fix loop on failures.
Create the GCP project, link credits, get the Gemini API key, fill .env.
Run the dev server. Click through. Fix the doc, not the code.
- ✓Participants can say in one line what they set out to build
- ✓Someone says 'wait, that's a polished-version feature' mid-build
- ✓Drop-ins are scoping their own build without being walked through it
- ✓At the end, the variations between participants are wide
- !Participants copy the demo verbatim instead of making it theirs
- !Builds keep slipping past 45 minutes because everyone added more features
- !At Compare Notes, every project looks the same
- !Wall of Vibes stays empty halfway through
When you see the latter: pause, get them to say out loud what they are building, and re-read the question this track emphasizes. The reset usually re-anchors the room.
What trips people up — and the fix.
Four issues that come up in almost every room. If a participant is stuck for more than 5 minutes, check these first.
Symptom: Gemini API call returns 403 / quota error halfway through Verify.
Fix: During Setup, link the Google Cloud credits to the GCP project at console.cloud.google.com/billing. If you skipped GCP entirely, AI Studio works for free in the browser — send them there instead.
Symptom: App loads but every Gemini call returns 401.
Fix: Open the project root, confirm `.env` exists (NOT `.env.example`), and the key is `GEMINI_API_KEY=...` with no quotes around the value. Restart the dev server after editing.
Symptom: App opens but the agent panel hangs on first prompt.
Fix: Make sure you downloaded the arm64 build, not Intel. Quit the app fully (Cmd-Q, not just close window) and reopen. If still stuck, check Activity Monitor that the process is `Apple` architecture.
Symptom: Participant runs `pip install`, gets ModuleNotFoundError later.
Fix: The codelab uses uv. Direct them to `uv sync` (installs deps from pyproject.toml) and `uv run <command>` (replaces `python <command>`). pip will silently install into the wrong environment.
Got everything you need?
Open a track, grab the kit, and start preparing. Once you’ve hosted, share what your room shipped on the showcase — it helps other GDGs get started.
What to demo, what to coach, what to fish for.
Participants see the high-level rhythm. You see the line to listen for and the polished-version pull-ins to tease at the end. Expand any track below.
01Glow UpSelfie + a hairstyle → see the new you.Listen for: “OMG that's me with bangs.”+
Upload a selfie. Pick from preset hairstyles. AI does a virtual hair try-on via Vertex AI image generation — same person, new look — and shows before / after side by side.
- Outfit and accessory modes
- Custom typed-in prompts
- Share button
- Side-by-side compare
- Lookbook to save favorites
- 'Rate my friends' group photo
- Decade time machine
context/image-gen-tryon.md
02Avatar StudioPhoto (you OR your pet) + pick a style → one stylized avatar.Listen for: “My cat looks like a Pixar character.”+
Upload a photo — your face OR your pet's face. Pick from four preset styles (e.g. Pixar, anime). AI returns one stylized avatar.
- Generate multiple avatars at once
- Animated avatars (subtle motion)
- Full character lore generator (name + backstory)
- Social media format presets (Twitter PFP, Discord, LinkedIn)
- User-defined style prompts
context/image-gen-stylization.md
03Year in PoetryTell AI your meaningful dates → a year calendar you can read like a poem.Listen for: “My whole year, laid out like a poem.”+
The participant tells AI the meaningful dates in their life — birthdays, anniversaries, the day they got their dog. AI generates a beautifully designed, scrollable year calendar with a short AI-written warm note for each date ('Grandma's birthday — call her' / 'One year since you and Sam').
- Login + edit-your-own-dates flow
- Google Calendar sync
- Birthday reminder notifications
- Family-shared edition
- Monthly reflection poem
- Photo-per-date upload
- Audio bed (ambient soundscape)
context/calendar-layout.mdcontext/personal-data.md
04FridgeChefType what's in your fridge → one recipe (with food photo).Listen for: “It actually used my random ingredients. And the photo looks like food.”+
One text box: 'what's in your fridge?' One button. AI returns one recipe — title, ingredients, steps — plus an AI-generated photo of the dish.
- Mode picker (quick / grandma / budget / healthy / fancy)
- Local grocery store integration
- Shopping list generator
- Dietary preferences
- Family meal planner
- Photo input — show your fridge instead of typing
- Save & share recipe gallery
context/image-gen-food.md
05Mood JarType how you're feeling → a little token drops into your jar.Listen for: “My scattered thoughts just turned into a cute little token in my jar.”+
One text box: type what's on your mind. AI generates a mood sticker/item — kawaii emoji, glowing orb, tiny potion, pixel-art object — and drops it into a visual 'jar' on the page. The jar fills up as you keep writing.
- Local storage so the jar persists
- Animated physics (tokens settle, jar tilts)
- Multi-day pattern detection
- Cross-device sync
- Mood history charts
- Share-your-jar mode
- Voice memo input
context/persona-prompt-pattern.md
06My CornerName + bio + 3 things → a live URL you can text your mom.Listen for: “I have a website I can text my mom.”+
Single page. Name, 2-line bio, 3 things you're proud of, one photo. Deploy to a real URL via Vercel/Netlify drag-and-drop. That's it.
- Custom domain
- Blog/log section
- Contact form
- Guestbook
- Seasonal/animated theme
- Links-tree mode
- AI-generated 'sounds like you' refinements
context/deploy-to-vercel.mdcontext/self-writing-prompts.md
07BulletProofPaste resume + paste job → tailored bullets.Listen for: “This is actually better than what I'd write.”+
Two text boxes — paste resume text, paste job posting text. One button. AI returns tailored resume bullets, ready to copy. No PDF parsing, no cover letter, no interview prep, no Word export.
- Match score + missing keywords
- PDF parsing for resume input
- Cover letter generator
- Interview question generator
- Networking message writer
- Application tracker
- ATS scoring
context/long-context-handling.mdcontext/text-diff-pattern.md
08Character ChatDefine one character → chat with them.Listen for: “I made this person and I'm talking to them.”+
Define one character (name + 1-paragraph personality + 1 thing they'd never say). Chat with them — up to 5 messages back and forth. No persistent memory across sessions.
- Persistent memory across sessions
- Character avatars and voices
- Multi-character world
- Reverse mode (you play the character)
- In-character safety guardrails
- Themed visual packs (anime, sci-fi, noir)
context/character-system-prompts.mdcontext/character-guardrails.md
09Your Own IdeaNo menu. No template. The thing you've been daydreaming about.Listen for: “I built the thing that was only in my head.”+
Bring an idea you've been sitting on — write a 1-paragraph PRD, hand it to Antigravity, and ship a working slice in 45 minutes. No starter repo. No menu. Just your spec and your taste.
- Whatever the at-home version of your idea looks like.
- Steal patterns from tracks 1-8 — they're reference implementations now.
- Polish pass: empty states, error states, the one delightful detail.