Ground Truth: The Live Agents Hackathon - powered by You.com | 500 USD Cash prize
Event description
Every AI model you've ever used is stuck in the past. Ground Truth is a one-day hackathon where you fix that.
Join localhost:nyc, The Builder Series and You.com for 10 hours of building AI agents grounded in the live web. Real-time data, deep research, verifiable answers. Come build the kind of agent people would trust with a real decision.
Problem Statement
Every LLM is frozen at its training cutoff. It doesn't know what happened this morning, and when it doesn't know, it guesses, confidently. That's the gap between a cool demo and a product people rely on. Your challenge: build an AI agent that knows what's true right now. It searches the live web through the You.com API, reads the sources, reasons over them and shows its receipts.
The Challenge Tracks
Live Wire (real-time agents): agents that wake up when the world changes. Price moves, breaking news, a competitor launch, a policy change, a new job posting. If it happened in the last hour, your agent already knows and already acted.
The Analyst (deep research): pick a profession (VCs, lawyers, journalists, recruiters, doctors, policy staffers) and replace its 40-hour research memo with a 4-minute one, every claim cited.
Receipts (trust and verification): agents that fact-check claims, catch AI hallucinations, verify sources and show their work.
Best Content (open to every team): post about what you built, tag You.com, and win a dedicated prize.
What to Expect
A kickoff walkthrough of the You.com API: Search, Contents, Research and the hosted MCP server
Free You.com API credits for every builder
6 hours of building
Teams of up to 4, or solo if that's your thing
Team matching at kickoff if you're coming alone
Mentors from You.com on the floor all day
Live demos to judges at the end, plus food all day
Prizes
1st Place Overall: $500 cash
Best Content: TBD
Judges
TBD
Who Should Attend
Engineers (full stack, backend, AI/ML)
Founders and aspiring founders building with AI
Designers and product people who want to ship something real
Researchers and analysts who know exactly what a great research agent should do
You don't need a finished idea. Just show up ready to build.
Sponsors
You.com: AI search infrastructure that gives agents real-time, cited access to the web through its Search, Contents and Research APIs.
Hosts
localhost:nyc: Making NYC the biggest startup ecosystem in the world.
The Builder Series: A 60,000+ member community redefining what networking looks like — curating founders, operators, investors & more into intentional rooms built for experiences people remember and relationships that last. It's a direct line to the most ambitious builders, with a community that actually shows up.
Connect with Me: Join 60,000+ people shaping the future