AI Week Claude Impact Lab Hackathon

Build AI tools to support small businesses

Kick off Seattle AI Week with a social impact hackathon sponsored by Anthropic and organized by your Seattle City Ambassador Adam Burgh (Founder of We Build With AI.

The Claude Impact Lab Hackathon is a one-day build sprint in collaboration with the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA). Teams of three to five hackers spend the day building apps, workflows, and playbooks that help small businesses put AI to work. Everything built is open-sourced on GitHub and available for small business to implement!

Small business owners/executives: complete this survey to help teams understand and build for your current AI challenges and needs.

Who this is for

Every team combines three kinds of people

• A small business owner or executive who brings a real problem
• Experienced professionals (3+ years full-time)
• A current student or recent grad

You don't need to be a developer to participate, but all teams will have at least one expert in agentic coding and multi-person GitHub repos.

Important: Admission is selective, and past Claude Community events have drawn 1,000+ applications. To improve your chances, take the time to answer registration questions fully and complete the survey in your confirmation email.

What you get

• $100 in Claude API credits for every participant
• A working project on GitHub, built with your team
• Winning team: Claude Max 20x for one month ($200 value per person) and a one year WTIA membership
• Top 3 teams: Tickets to the #SeattleAIWeek Opening Reception and AI Summit courtesy of WTIA, and Anthropic swag

How it works

• Teams form at the happy hour the evening before, or we match you into one when you arrive on Sunday
• About seven hours of build time. Nothing pre-built, so every team starts level
• Submissions are a repo link plus a demo recording
• Two rounds of judging: preliminary round followed by finalists presenting on stage

Small business owners and executives: the problems to solve come from you! Complete the survey here, whether or not you're attending: https://forms.gle/XevoZ2UXDKwnieGs8

Admission

Registration is an application, not first-come. After you complete your registration, look out for an email from Luma to your registered email with a link to a short survey. Completing it improves your chances and helps us build balanced teams.

Team formation happy hour

• Saturday, October 24, 4:30 to 6:30 pm
• Admitted participants will receive a separate Luma invite.

*Optional, but highly encouraged.* Drinks and light snacks. Meet the other participants, form your team in person, and get early access to what Seattle small businesses told us about their AI needs and challenges, so your team walks in on Sunday knowing what to build. The data walk-through is at 5:15. Anyone who can't make it is matched into a team when they arrive at the hackathon on Sunday.

Hackathon agenda

Sunday, October 25

9:00 Check-in, light breakfast, team formation
9:45 Opening
10:30 Start building
1:00 Lunch
5:30 Submission deadline
5:45 Dinner
6:30 Final presentations
7:30 Winners announced

Bring a laptop, a charger, and a GitHub account. Claude Pro/Max accounts are encouraged but not required (you can use the API credit with Claude Code in your terminal). Food and drinks are provided throughout the day.

Partners

We Build With AI's mission is to enable everyone to build with AI, regardless of coding or technical experience. Subscribe to our Luma calendar to register and be notified of future events.

Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) is the statewide trade association connecting Washington's tech companies, startups, investors, and policymakers, and the organizer of Seattle AI Week.

Apply to WTIA Founder Cohort 15 by October 30! Founder Cohort is WTIA's free, no-equity, four-month accelerator for pre-seed and seed-stage tech startups in Washington. Applications close Friday, October 30.

Thinkspace is a coworking and event space for founders and early-stage teams, with locations in Seattle on Lake Union and in Redmond, and our venue for the hackathon.

Credit sponsors

Anthropic
$100 in Claude API credits for every participant, plus Claude Max 20x for the winning team.

Tavily
8,000 free API credits for web search and extraction built for AI agents.

OpenRouter
$10 in API credits: one key for hundreds of LLMs.

Wispr Flow
Free months of Wispr Flow Pro: AI voice dictation that works in every app.

By registering for or attending this event, you consent for the hosts and its affiliates to use your name, image, and likeness in any marketing related to the event. This consent includes, without limitation, an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, fully-paid, royalty-free, sub-licensable, non-transferable license to use any photographs or video recording on you taken while in attendance at the event. You also consent to receiving emails from the event hosts and sponsors.