This is Kiroween
Helen Hasbun
Product Marketing
It's finally here! This Halloween, we're kicking off our first-ever Kiroween hackathon, our annual challenge designed to inspire wild, creative ideas that would be difficult to bring to life with traditional tooling. We are awarding $100,000 across 12 different prizes and 66 winners, with a 1st place prize of $30,000. Come experience how Kiro's agentic capabilities like specs, agent hooks, steering, and MCP can push the boundaries of what is possible. We can't wait to see how Kiro can empower you, whether you're a seasoned developer, a startup founder, a designer, or a tinkerer.
Note: We will be providing supplemental Kiro usage to participants equivalent to the Kiro Pro+ tier throughout the submission period. Once you register for Kiroween, you will receive a confirmation email with detailed instructions on how to receive the benefits. Our priority is making sure you have the resources to meaningfully build and experiment with Kiro.
Dare to code in dark mode
The challenge is to build a working app using Kiro, inspired by a set of spooky categories to get you in the Halloween spirit. We wanted to keep these open-ended so you can build what excites you the most, and inspiring enough to bring out some really cool and unique app ideas:
Resurrection: Bring your favorite dead technology back to life. Reimagine obsolete tech with today’s innovations or solving tomorrow's problems.
Frankenstein: Stitch together a chimera of technologies into one app. Bring together seemingly incompatible elements to build something unexpectedly powerful.
Skeleton Crew: Build a skeleton code template lean enough to be clear but flexible enough to support various use cases. Show us its versatility with two distinct applications from your foundation.
Costume Contest: Build any app but show us a haunting user interface that’s polished and unforgettable. Bring in spooky design elements that enhance your app’s function.
Plus, a startup flavor
We’ve added a new prize category for Kiroween that awards $10,000 to the Best Startup Project (see full rules for submission details). We want to provide startup founders a chance to rapidly prototype and develop concepts that would typically require significantly more resources. Kiro's ability to accelerate development cycles means you can test more ambitious ideas, with faster iterations, and emerge with a compelling product —all within the hackathon timeframe.
The deets
Key dates:
Launch: Friday, October 31, 2025, 9am PT
Submission Deadline: Friday, December 5, 2025, 2pm PT
Prize pool: A total of $100,000 in prizes awaits, including category winners, overall winners, and special bonus prizes for creativity, social engagement, and more.
Judging criteria: Your submission will be evaluated by a panel of expert industry judges, including Ania Kubow, Santiago Valdarrama, Rachel Stephens, and more. Each app will be assessed based on:
Potential Value: How useful, accessible, and impactful is your solution?
Implementation: How effectively did you leverage Kiro's capabilities?
Quality and Design: How creative, original, and polished is your project?
Submission Requirements: You'll need to provide your public code repository with the .kiro directory (showing how you used specs, hooks, and steering), a functional application URL, a 3-minute demonstration video, and documentation on how you utilized Kiro throughout your development process that shows us your next-level understanding of its features, such as:
Vibe coding: How did you structure your conversations with Kiro to build your project? What was the most impressive code generation Kiro helped you with?
Agent hooks: What specific workflows did you automate with Kiro hooks? How did these hooks improve your development process?
Spec-driven development: How did you structure your spec for Kiro to implement? How did the spec-driven approach improve your development process? How did this compare to vibe coding?
Steering docs: How did you leverage steering to improve Kiro’s responses? Was there a particular strategy that made the biggest difference?
MCP: How did extending Kiro’s capabilities help you build your project? What sort of features or workflow improvements did MCP enable that otherwise would have been difficult or impossible?
Discord is the place to be
The Kiro Discord awaits with a dedicated #kiroween-hackathon channel where you can connect with fellow participants, form teams, share ideas, and get support from other developers and Kiro team members. Our community is ready to help you navigate challenges, offer feedback, and celebrate your progress along the way. We also have bi-weekly office hours where you’ll be able to ask questions in real time to our product experts. Beyond the hackathon, you’ll find project spotlights, product announcements, event updates, and other news and resources regularly shared. See you there?
Ready to git commit to the darkness?
Kiroween was designed for Kiro developers as a fun opportunity to experiment with Kiro and leverage the full gamut of features and capabilities it offers. This is your moment to create something unforgettable. Get inspired by Kiroween’s special spooky factor, summon your ideas, and git commit to the darkness.
Let’s connect - tag @kirodotdev on X, LinkedIn, or Instagram, and @kiro.dev on Bluesky, and share updates on your progress using hashtag #codewithkiro