Hack the 6ix: Summer 2026
I went to Hack the 6ix this month and I WON, nothing😅
Planning + Execution
Before going, I had a team, but things happened and I eventually had to find another team, they ended up being people I found on the team discord.
I arrived really early (like 3pm) because trains didn’t run at a good time, this ended up letting meet two people who ended up winning the hackathon. Very talented people.
When I first met my team, I was excited, but at the same time worried, they all couldn't stay the night so I ended up locking in by myself. Although a little sad, I made the most of it; I went to several night events, met + connected with several talent people, got to make a real friend, and got a LOT of work done on the project (main backend system working).
The next day, we managed to complete the whole system but didn’t deploy it, I had like 8 hours of sleep total between the three days and slept like 14 hours on the Monday. Unfortunately, we didn’t win, our demo presentation wasn’t the best tbh and honestly it was a niche area that I don’t think the judges really understood.
What We Built
We built Reverie, an Agentic AI clothing upcycling system with an embedded marketplace. We used AI Agents to for
- ideation,
- visualization,
- environmental savings calculation
- and instructions on how to upcyling the clothing
We were targeting the environmental award, 0auth, and best use of Gemini.
Thoughts:
In my head, I said this would be my last hackathon, because I’m getting old😠I wanted to go out with a bang and win. I put in 130% of my work capacity, slept 2 hours the first night, and 10x my token usage I usually use on cursor lmao.
On a serious note, I teared up on the train ride home; I didn’t think I would but I did, when my sister picked me up, I started bawling my eyes out, it was embarassing, but because I lost at competition this competition I tried so hard in, it's devasting I wasn't recognized with anything. I don't regret it though, it shows the amount of passion I put in the project.
Don’t worry, it’s a good memory, maybe a little bitter sweet, but I’ve decided this won’t be my last; I got accepted into Hack the North at Waterloo this September. I have a team with someone I met at Hack the North and friends I had from school; I’ll try my best and make something that I genuinely enjoyed and could win.