"How I Lost My First Hackathon and Still Won"

Do you think AI can do anything? Like, literally anything you want?
Yeah… I used to believe that too.

I was that guy telling friends, “AI will replace you. AI can do this, that — basically everything.” I thought I had AI all figured out. Then I joined my first hackathon and… well, let’s just say AI gave me the “bruh” moment of my life.

---

The Beginning

I’m a first-year Computer Science Engineering (CSE) student, obsessed with tech, coding, and building stuff in public.

I first heard the word “Hackathon” in 11th grade from my neighbour. I had so many questions: What is this thing? Why do people do it? Do they actually “hack” something?
I went home, researched, and decided: Once I get to college, I’m doing one.

---

The Opportunity

A few months into college, exams were over, and I was scrolling X (Twitter) when I saw a post: “We are hiring” with a stipend of 1–2 lakh.

It was from a company called Puch AI, whose mission was to make AI speak every Indian language so no one is left out. Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi — you name it. I thought that was super cool. They were also running a hackathon, so I messaged a friend and boom — we had a team.

---

The Game Plan

We both knew Python well enough to survive, so we guessed the theme would be web development.

Our “genius” plan:

• Backend in Python.

• Frontend handled entirely by AI (because obviously, AI can do anything… or so we thought XD).

We were confident. Very confident. Too confident.

---

The Plot Twist

Hackathon day. 5 PM. We joined the Discord server. Five minutes later, the website updated.

The theme? Just /mcp server.

We looked at each other’s faces and just laughed. “What even is this?!” We must have refreshed the page 10 times thinking it would magically change into something like “Build a cool website” — but nope, it stayed /mcp server.

Both of us had never heard the term before in our lives. We went to ChatGPT for help, then YouTube. Finally, we understood it enough to start.

Our idea: make an MCP server that sends “Good Morning” messages to all your contacts at once. Saves you 20 minutes of typing. Practical, simple, totally doable… right?

---

Building Chaos

We brought in Claude AI for coding help and followed along. Installed tools, wrote code, feeling productive… until the first error popped up.

Fixed it.
New error.
Fixed that one.
Another error.

Oh, and the AI kept giving us C++ code — which neither of us knew. Thanks, AI. Very helpful.

After hours of patching things together, we somehow got it working. We were so happy, it felt like we’d already won the competition.

Our first accomplishment

---

The Loop from Hell

But then came the “make it actually work” part.

We ran the code — nothing happened.
Asked AI for help — new code, new error.
Fixed it — different error.
Repeat forever.

We had officially entered The Loop from Hell — and the exit door was locked.

we did small testing before adding main tool to it .

The clock kept ticking. It felt like pages flying out of a book in a storm. We were stressed, laughing, confused, and hopeless all at the same time. The deadline hit, and… no submission. Two days of excitement and effort — gone like it never existed.

On building process..

---

What I Learned

It hurt, but it also woke me up.

AI cannot replace humans. But a human who knows how to use AI well can replace other humans. That day popped my “AI can do anything” bubble for good.

The lessons I took away:

• Do your research before jumping in.

• Know your tools and languages.

• Don’t use AI blindly — it’s in its developing phase, not its magic wand phase.

---

If I had to sum it up:
Don’t let AI think for you. Let it make your thinking better.