​Aptura’s Self-Improving AI Hack

​Can you improve AI better than AI can?

​12 hours. 35 hackers. An AI running the improvement loop on its own.

​Build a system that helps an AI get better at a task, then see whether your team can outperform the same process running without human help.

​Here’s how it works: a curator writes a skill — a set of instructions for a learner model. The learner tackles a task, and its results are scored on unseen evaluation data. The curator uses those results to improve the skill and runs the loop again.

​The model can play curator for itself. So can you.

​🛠 Track 1 — Build & Compete

​Work in teams of 3–4. Write better skills, create additional training data, build tools the learner can call, and find where it falls short. Build your system, inspect the results, and iterate.

​The challenge spans finance, healthcare, and general tasks, across one frontier model and one open-source model.

​Your team and the autonomous baseline compete under the same learner budget. Can your team spot weaknesses and design improvements that another model misses?

​The highest score wins.

​🤝 Track 2 — Walk-ins & Networking

​Come for the conversations. Meet hackers, researchers, engineers, and founders, exchange ideas, and catch the finalists’ demos.

​⚡ Building credits

• ​$100 in Runware credits per hackathon participant

• ​$50 in OpenAI credits per team

​Competition runs use a matched learner budget for teams and the autonomous baseline.

​🏆 Prizes from Runware

​$1,500 cash + $13,500 in Runware credits

• ​1st: $750 cash + $7,000 in credits

• ​2nd: $500 cash + $4,000 in credits

• ​3rd: $250 cash + $2,500 in credits

​🗓 19 September · 09:00–21:00

​☕ 09:00–10:30 — Doors open, breakfast & intros
🚀 10:30–11:00 — Kick-off, challenge & rules
💻 11:00 — Hack begins
🥗 13:00–14:00 — Lunch & networking
⚡ 14:00–18:30 — Build, test, iterate
🍕 18:30–19:30 — Submissions close, dinner & networking
🎤 19:30–20:30 — Finalists’ demos
🏆 20:30–21:00 — Winners, prizes & wrap-up

​📍 Corgi Cafe, London

​Hosted by Aptura and Project A, with support from Runware, OpenAI, and Corgi.

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​35 hackathon spots. Teams of 3–4. Walk-ins welcome for networking.