Hackyard Why We Sponsored Hackyard Yard #4
Yard #4 was a one-week online build competition for solo developers, and Ryware funded its cash prize pool. 22 projects shipped. Here is why a software company like ours backs builders and small hackathons, and how the week turned out.
The short version
We build software for a living. Most of what we know about building it well came from shipping things under real constraints: a deadline, a small team, and a problem someone actually has. A hackathon packs exactly that into a single week. Sponsoring one is the most direct way we know to give something back to the people doing that work.
Yard #4 at a glance
- Organizer
- Hackyard (hackyard.tech)
- Format
- Online, solo builders only, one-week build
- Theme
- Gamification: take something mundane, an everyday task or a chore, and turn it into a game you play while you do it.
- Tools
- Any AI model allowed
- Field
- Capped at 50 builders
- Shipped
- 22 projects, each with a public repository and a demo
- Prize pool
- $180 in cash, funded by Ryware: $100 for first place, $50 for second, $30 for third
- Rules
- All code written during build week, a public open-source repository, and a demo video
Key dates (UTC)
- Check-in openedSat, Oct 3 · 18:00
- KickoffMon, Oct 5 · 18:00
- Late joins closedWed, Oct 7 · 18:00
- Ship deadlineFri, Oct 9 · 18:00
- Voting closedSun, Oct 11 · 22:00
Why we did it
Five reasons, roughly in the order we talked about them.
Good software starts with builders
Every product we have shipped, for clients and for ourselves (Rydel, Decim, and the open-source Nona), started with a person or a small group building something before anyone asked them to. That instinct is worth protecting. A hackathon is one of the few places it gets rewarded directly: no roadmap, no sales cycle, no permission needed.
Small events need sponsors the most
Large hackathons already have corporate backers. Small, focused ones like Yard #4 run on the organizers' own time and whatever prize money they can find. A modest cash pool changes what an event like that can offer, and all of it goes to the builders who ship.
The rules match how we work
Yard #4 asked for code written during build week, a public repository and a demo video. That is close to our own standard. We publish open-source software under permissive licences, and we would rather show working code than describe it. We were glad to put our name next to an event that rewards shipping something real, in the open.
Solo builders with AI tools are worth watching
Yard #4 was solo-only and allowed any AI model, which made it a live experiment in how much one developer can ship in a week with today's tools. We use AI-assisted workflows in our own engineering, and we wanted to see what builders do with them when the only limit is time.
A small theme rewards craft
Turning a chore into a game sounds like a small problem. Doing it well takes product sense, UX judgement and restraint, the same qualities we look for in our own team. They are also much harder to fake than a long feature list.
The code stays with the builders. Our part was the prize pool. The work, and the credit, belong to them.
How it turned out
22 builders shipped a project by the Friday deadline. The community vote set the order, and Ryware had no say in it. These four drew the most votes when voting closed.
Chore Wars
27 votesA multiplayer co-op game that turns household cleaning into a spaceship mission. Each player's real chores power up the crew's shared ship, and it launches once everyone is done.
Repository ↗Laundry Mountain
19 votesTurns folding and putting away clothes into a climb to the summit, with rivalries and races along the way.
Repository ↗Judge My Tabs
8 votesA Chrome extension that puts your open browser tabs on trial, so cleaning them up becomes a courtroom game with ranks to unlock.
Repository ↗Chore Pet
8 votesA small pet that lives in a home you build. The only way to keep it happy is to do your real chores, and it never dies if you skip a day.
Repository ↗Judge My Tabs and Chore Pet finished level on votes. One more detail we enjoyed: Questodoro, a Pomodoro timer turned mission board, runs its live settings on Nona, our open-source remote config service.
Why supporting builders matters to us
Ryware is a software consultancy, and our work depends on a healthy supply of people who can take an idea all the way to something that runs. Few of them learned that in a classroom. They learned it from side projects, competitions, and shipping things nobody asked for.
Backing that is not charity. We are investing in the craft our whole business rests on. When more developers practise shipping complete, working products, the whole industry gets better at it, including the teams we work alongside.
It is also a useful check on our own habits. Watching someone build a working product in a week shows what a team really needs to ship, and what is just process.
What comes next
The cash prizes go to the top three by community vote. Twenty-two finished projects in one week, all of them open source, is a good result for a small event, and we would like to keep supporting events like it.
Building something?
Hackyard runs new Yards regularly, and upcoming ones are listed on their site. If you are building something bigger and want a team behind it, we would like to hear about it.