GitHub has announced For the Love of Code, a summer hackathon for joyful, ridiculous, and wildly creative projects. The idea is that you take the mad ideas you've got sitting on the back burner and actually build them.

 The blog post announcing the hackathon says:

"That idea you've been sitting on? The domain you bought at 2AM? A silly or serious side project? This summer, we invite you to build it — for the joy, for the vibes, For the Love of Code."

The thinking behind the hackathon is that code shouldn't just be for solving problems. It's also for exploring ideas, expressing creativity, and building something just because it sparks joy.

For the Love of Code is a global, summer-long hackathon for developers of all experience levels. The hackathon is running from July 16 to September 22, 2025, and apart from the possibility of winning Internet immortality through being a top entry featured on the GitHub blog, there are slightly more useful prizes of 12 months of GitHub Copilot Pro+ for winners in each category. 

The competition is organized into six categories that GitHub is describing, tongue in cheek, as highly scientific. Category 1 is titled Buttons, beeps, and blinkenlights, and the team running the competition says that if it lights up, makes noise, or looks like it escaped from a 1998 RadioShack, it belongs here. Hardware hacks (real or simulated) that blink, beep, buzz, or surprise. The examples they suggest include a traffic light that displays your build status; a soldered-together sidekick that yells "LGTM!" every time your tests pass; or a laptop opening and closing-powered morse code generator. 

Category 2, Agents of change, is all about AI-powered experiences, agents, or old-fashioned bots. The team says that whether it's helping automate workflows, critiquing your code like a judgmental coworker, or pretending to be your sentient toaster, this is your playground for all things assistant-y and absurd. Their suggestions include an AI-assisted app to help split restaurant bills, or an LLM-powered changelog writer that wildly over-dramatizes every update, so that when the honest comment would be "Fixed minor bug", the app would report "Vanquished a lurking menace that corrupted the sacred login flow."

I did like the suggestion of an agent that reviews PRs like a sarcastic senior dev, an overly nice intern, or a concerned parent: "Are you sure this function needs to be this recursive?"

The third category, Terminal talent, is aimed at command-line tools, extensions, and TUI projects that are clever, useful, or just plain fun. Serious utilities with personality, beautifully crafted interfaces, or quirky scripts that make your terminal feel more alive all belong here. If it runs in the shell and makes you smile, it belongs here.

Category 4 is the place for games, for building something playable, puzzling, or just plain fun. Fun first, functional close behind.

World wide wonders is the title of the next category, with a remit of any web project that makes people smile, think, learn, or click "view source" belongs here. The organizers suggest examples such as a nostalgic 90s-style site that loads like it's on dial-up, complete with pixel art loading bars, pop-up ads, a guestbook, and that dancing baby GIF; or a CAPTCHA that requires you to kill baddies in Doom. 

The final category is for everything that doesn't fit elsewhere. Think extensions, plugins, tools, GitHub Actions, or prototypes that turned into something unexpectedly useful. Practical, playful, or just uniquely yours.

Whichever category you choose, the team says make it wildly useful, or just plain weird. As long as it brings you joy, get on and code it.

More Information

Official Submission Form

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