Originally published as a Advisory Hour Substack post on 2026-07-17. This local copy preserves the text and public supporting media alongside the Summer Into AI record.
Original post
The Summer into AI 2026 challenge concludes. Medals and prizes are routing thru the postal system to their intended destination. Over the four-week timeframe we collectively shipped over ninety-one applications, one music video, one documentary, made obscure government datasets public, one movie poster, and one true to life adventure involving a bear and a tractor. We even had a young participant ship an app- which had me contemplate a new award category just for kids.
Shout out to our top three medal winners: Jake Strait, Myles and Adam
During the competition the market evolved fast. In fact, it’s worth noting what all happened during this four-week time period:
Anthropic’s Fable was released, and then it was removed. And then it was returned. OpenAI shipped Sol-5.6. Grok 4.5 was released. The 250th celebration of the United States was held. Many of us had family, traveled, and one unlucky man discovered the time he chose to paint his house was during the hottest summer on record. And yet, this competition saw more apps and products shipped than big enterprise gets out in a year.
This is the second competition I’ve held about applied AI.
The first was earlier in 2026 and titled Spring into AI. I never once imaged I’d host two competitions. And now I’m looking at a changed world: the participants shipped over 100 apps across two competitions. Nearly half as many public repos available for anyone to fork, build and extend. Substack posts document workflows on all manner of things. The competition and submissions are all publicly documented, available across each competitor’s substack, social media, or personal website. With the help of Codex and Hermes, the administration was largely automated, too. I tracked it all at my site.
The competition was a great pressure cooker of focused learnings. The limited time forced little tricks over the course of the competition. Participants shared many of those and saw competitors adopt the same. There were tooling swaps. During Spring into AI it was OpenClaw that stole the show. During Summer into AI? Hermes. I experienced AI building geometry using blender and expanded my own local AI capabilities-from vision and more. I no longer think of “Applied AI” as a role. That’s like saying “Applied Excel” is a role. It’s just something you do.
Shipping Software in 2026
The contour of the competition took us on themes about celebrating America. We began with the founding of the United States, built independence engines, made public work for the public good, and then rounded it all out by building on the past to make something for the future. Incredibly, everyone had travel, holiday, and their day jobs. Yet, the competitors outshipped a lot of companies in terms of volume.
I find that intriguing. You should, too. It’s worth thinking about.
Eight people shipped nearly one hundred applications in four weeks across different themes. Apps that are useful, a music video, documentary, and several complex games-in their spare time. Legitimately useful because the datasets are based on real public data from the government’s data.gov data resource.
At the top of this post in the header is this image. The image features one screen capture from every single app that was deployed. It’s phenomenal what was done. If you had deployed an app, you’ll find or or more of your submissions somewhere in here.
Competition Three?
I’ll be frank-I need some time off myself. Running a competition is a lot of work. If you’re an event host out there, I feel you. There’s a tremendous amount of details that even with AI, you still have to get figured out. And I can’t really hold a third one until I figure out a nuanced change.
I have to congratulate the ingenuity of Jake and Myles. The duo did the fine art of automating the competition. When I mentioned that to them as an idea on how to participate over a busy summer, I didn’t think they’d actually do it. I reviewed their repos and saw how they built out full software pipelines. I won’t name who, but one of them confided in me that “Yeah, I’m just sending a message from my phone. I’m doing a par5 course at the moment.”
Jake suggested a competition tweak that instead of multiple apps, that the focus should go deeper into one app or domain. It’s an interesting thought-with Fall around the corner, doing something that reminded me of a tree. A tree with leaves metaphorically connects to one app and different interpretations or depth-in some deep, spiritual level with me.
It’s an idea that’s taking root.
Connected work
- The Build Issue: Read the illustrated magazine that follows the projects across all four weeks.
- Season standings: Review the final scores, medals, and competition record.
Continue the season
Explore Summer Into AI 2026 or read the original on Substack.