Announcing the Loco LLM Hackathon 1.0 Building Open-Source AI for Everyone

This morning, an email about smolagents—a breakthrough framework replicating OpenAI’s powerful Deep Research system—landed in my inbox. Inspired, I’m thrilled to announce the Loco LLM Hackathon 1.0, a one-day sprint on February 13th to supercharge locally run AI and democratize its potential.

What’s Happening?

Join developers, researchers, and AI enthusiasts worldwide for a 24-hour collaborative sprint to build open-source tools that enhance locally run large language models (LLMs). Using Hugging Face’s newly released Open Deep Research framework—which empowers local LLMs to rival proprietary systems like OpenAI’s Deep Research—participants will:

Create proof-of-concept tools (think: web crawlers, code agents, multimodal analyzers).
Publish projects openly on GitHub/Hugging Face.
Compete for community acclaim (and bragging rights!).

Why This Matters

The AI revolution is here—but access shouldn’t depend on corporate budgets. By leveraging frameworks like smolagents, we can:
🔓 Democratize AI: Bring enterprise-grade research capabilities to local machines.
💡 Spark Innovation: Turn hobbyist setups into tools for solving real-world problems (healthcare, education, climate).
🌍 Build Responsibly: Prioritize privacy, transparency, and community ownership over black-box systems.

How It Works

Who: Solo coders or teams (all skill levels welcome!).
When: February 13th, 2025—kickoff at 8 AM UTC.
Where: Collaborate on Reddit (r/LocoLLM)
Goal: Build one functional tool by midnight that expands local LLM capabilities (e.g., vision integration, agentic workflows).

The Vision

This isn’t just a hackathon—it’s a step toward decentralizing AI’s future. Winning projects will:

Connect creators with AI startups/job opportunities.
Lay groundwork for a grassroots ecosystem of ethical, accessible AI tools.

Join Us
Whether you’re tweaking a LLaMA-4B model on a Raspberry Pi or scaling Mistral on a home server, your code can help level the playing field. Let’s prove that open-source, local AI isn’t just viable—it’s essential.

👉 RSVP Now: Reddit Thread 🔗 Framework Details: Open Deep Research Blog

Together, we’ll make cutting-edge AI accessible to all—not just Silicon Valley. 🚀

Daniel Kliewer
Founder, Loco LLM Community
Democratizing AI, one local model at a time.