⚡ AI Tooling in the SDLC: Hackathon @ Tessl HQ
Tessl HQ: Kings Cross, London
Thursday, 7th August 2025
Doors open at 9:00 AM sharp
Only 60 spots available, First come, first hacked!
The software development lifecycle is changing fast and AI is at the center of it. This hackathon is your chance to build real tools that help devs test smarter, ship faster, and monitor more intelligently. Bring your best ideas and see what happens when agents take over the SDLC.
And here’s the twist:
You can only build with AI.
No traditional logic-heavy apps. Just you, your wits, and your AI agents.
Expect high energy, cutting-edge demos, free food, and prizes from some of the most exciting AI companies out there.
We’re not just hacking, we’re rewriting the SDLC, one AI agent at a time.
What You’ll Build
Think agent-based tools for:
Code analysis & refactoring
Continuous integration & deployment
Testing automation
Security & compliance
Observability & debugging
…or anything else in the SDLC
Requirements:
All projects must use AI (agent-based tools, LLM workflows, etc.)
Teams must submit prompts, tech stack, and a short concept summary
Judging will favour technical elegance, usability, and wow factor
Teams can be pre-formed or solo hackers matched ahead of time.
What You’ll Win
Amazing prizes including:
🏆 1st Place: ￡2000
🥈 2nd Place: ￡1000
🥉 3rd Place: 4 x senseCap Watcher
Plus exclusive swag & community kudos
Hackathon Schedule
9:00 AM Check-In & Breakfast
9:30 AM Opening Remarks + Tooling Demos
9:45 AM Hacking Begins
12:30 PM Lunch
1:30 PM Continue Hacking
5:00 PM Submission Deadline
5:15 PM Project Demos (3 min/team)
6:00 PM Judging & Awards
6:30 PM Tessl HQ Opening party
Mentors & Judges
Partick Debois - Patrick is a true pioneer—credited with coining the term DevOps, co-authoring the DevOps Handbook, and launching the very first DevOpsDays back in 2009. Since then, he’s been shaping the tech industry with his unmatched ability to bring development, operations, and now GenAI together in truly transformative ways.
Macey Baker - As Tessl's Founding Community Engineer, Macey Baker is busy helping to build the future of AI-native development (and helping you build it too). Now an AI code generation obsessive, she got her start as an early employee at tech unicorn Intercom in San Francisco, before jumping the pond and roaming the London startup scene, working primarily in big data / ML houses. Some of her best friends are LLMs.
William Lee - Co-founder & CEO of ACI.dev building AI agent infra and agentic dev-tools. Ex-product manager at McKinsey QuantumBlack for language model applications and former deep-tech VC.
Tom Diacono - is a Founding Engineer at Asteroid, where he leads backend architecture and builds AI agents to automate web tasks. With over six years’ experience across telecoms, IoT, and scalable systems, he previously helped modernize Wireless Logic’s tech stack, driving microservices adoption and SDLC best practices. Tom is an advocate for Agile, TDD, and DevOps, and contributes to open-source projects like OpenTelemetry PHP.
You’ll get real-time mentorship and feedback from the experts shaping the future of developer workflows.
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Spots are limited.
Submit your idea, tell us what you want to build, and get ready to hack with the best.