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hack·march 3, 2026·13 min read

c0mpiled-6: AI for Productivity & Research

by lucas fedronic2.2k reads

Overview

Penn State showed up in a big way, treating us to an exceptional night of hacking with over 150 builders and 59 submissions! c0mpiled-6/pennstate was themed around AI for productivity & research, and we saw projects ranging from game theory simulations of agent-to-agent interactions, to rigorous research paper review tools, to screen time apps integrated with Canvas and learning materials.

Reflections

  • Good: Effective theme! We saw more creative ideation and better personal connections to problem statements.
  • Good: Fruitful collaboration with a university department! They moved fast, provided helpful resources, pulled in tons of talent, and helped judge. (These are the same professors who sent their students all the way to SF for hackathons, so they're clearly doing something right! Shoutout Professor Brad and Professor Ted)
  • Bad: Need to give our finalists more guidance on pitches. We set a time limit of 2 minutes, which is super doable but proved challenging. Having a quick workshop to better prepare participants would be worth it.
  • Observation: As engineering skills shift (even more) from coding to prompting, orchestrating, and tooling, it would be interesting to test ways of capturing those latter inputs (i.e. Claude Code exports, but better).
  • Observation: Skipped the fireside chat this time around. We had limited in-person founders, and I wanted to test jumping straight into building. At past events, participants have been super eager to get started, and engagement was a bit shaky. My questions tended to focus on experiences with hackathons, accelerators, getting started with building — super relevant for students but over-saturated. A great fireside should surface ideas that are completely new to listeners. Will explore!

Judges

In-person:

Remote:

Prizes & Recognition

1st Place ($3,000): DoomScholar

2nd Place ($1,500): Research Rodeo

3rd Place ($500): Wargames

Most Venture-Backable ($800): Web Design Agency

Best First-Timers ($800): Survivors

Lyra Special Track ($100): YJM

Best Hack for Academic Integrity ($800): Pizza Monsters

All Submissions

adversary#

AI Career Accelerator#

AstroFlow#

Atom#

AtomInfer#

bvrs#

ChatamICooked?#

Common Ground#

compscimaxxing#

Curio#

Descrates#

Doodle Director#

DoomScholar#

EchoLab#

Ethical#

FadeThat#

FARM.AI#

FlowState#

HablaConmigo#

HotkeyTagger#

HUSTLE#

Ideate#

Insight Universe#

JQ#

Lacuna-matata#

Lance Streuber#

LearnForce#

Litlens#

LitSum#

LUCATAGLE#

Meeting Lint#

P-Hackers#

PaperTrail#

Pizza Monsters#

PreMortem#

ProgRisk AI#

Propelr.ai#

ProtoPaper#

PURA#

RepoLens#

Research Rodeo#

Research-Navigator#

Resify#

RippleJourney#

Rushi Patel#

Seallybus#

Sketched#

Socratic Tutor#

Survivors#

Synthesis#

Taazify#

Team Nova#

Trainlane#

Trajectory#

Unemployed Bums#

UniPath#

Waltr#

Wargames#

YJM#

All Photos




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