The Breaking Apps Hackathon ran for four weeks, sponsored by Bug0. The brief was simple: write Passmark tests for any web app, then publish a Hashnode article about what you found. The entries made the case for plain-English tests run by AI. They catch the bugs selectors miss. Thanks to everyone who joined.
Here are the winners.
🏆 Grand Winner: $1,200
Yahid Basha, I build AI agents professionally. I used Passmark on my personal tracker at 4 AM. It found 8 bugs — 5 invisible to any manual test
A Passmark test suite against a personal tracker app, including semantic assertions on AI-generated morning briefing output.
Repo: Yahid-Basha/passmark-tests
🥈 1st Runner-up: $1,000
Manjunath Patil, AI Shopped My Store. Math Decided If It Could Ship: Building ReceiptRipper with Passmark
A purpose-built commerce app paired with a Passmark gauntlet that verifies eight truth surfaces against a Decimal.js oracle, across five locales and eight seeded bug classes.
Repo: ladiesmans217/Breaking-Apps
🥉 2nd Runner-up: $800
Hempun, How Passmark caught three real bugs in my vibe-coded realtime chat app
Passmark tests on a realtime chat app, with a two-browser setup and a custom Mailpit email provider.
Repo: hempun10/lume
🎖️ 3rd Runner-up: $600
Nishikanta Ray, We Let an AI Break Our Analytics Platform
A 52-test, 13-spec Passmark suite covering 17 routes on the InsightTrack analytics platform, plus a framework-level vision-model compatibility patch.
Repo: NishikantaRay/InsightTrack
🎖️ 4th Runner-up: $400
Priyanshu, The Founder Who Tested His Own Production App With AI
Passmark tests on the live LibSpace production app, structured around Defence Verification, Adversarial Probing, and Discovery.
Repo: PriyanshuJava/libspace-passmark-tests
🎁 Swag for the first 100 submissions
The first 100 valid submissions get Bug0 and Hashnode branded swag. If you're on the list, check your email over the next few days. We'll reach out to collect your shipping address.
🎖️ How to claim prizes
All winners and runners-up will receive an email at the primary address on Hashnode with instructions to claim their prize from the Hashnode team over the next few days.
Regardless of whether you won or not, we see and appreciate the hard work, dedication, and originality you poured into your projects. Thanks for breaking apps with us.
About the author
I am the Co-Founder of Hashnode. I write (about) code and keep interest in Venture Funding and startups. Feel free to contact me at sandeep@hashnode.com.
Comments
Join the discussionNishikanta Ray , Manjunath Patil , Priyanshu Anand Please check your inbox.
Hi Team, I was selected in the Breaking Apps Hackathon, but I haven't received any prize claim email or follow-up communication yet. Could you please look into this and resend the instructions? Thank you!
Echoing Priyanshu here. It has been nearly a month since the May 18th announcement and I have not received any prize claim email, swag communication, or any outreach at all. Could you please look into this and resend the instructions? Would appreciate a reply here or via email. Thank you.
Hi Team Hashnode and Sandeep Panda , it’s been a month since the Breaking Apps Hackathon results were announced, but I haven't received my prize claim email yet. My project is "The Founder Who Tested His Own Production App With AI" (4th Runner-up) and my username is @PriyanshuJava. Could you please look into this or resend the instructions? Thank you!
