MischiefClaw Hack NY [AI Tinkerers - New York City]

MischiefClaw Hack NY

Saturday

Saturday, April 4th, 2026 • 9AM to 9PM (EDT)

Address Info

Available on RSVP acceptance

Event Ended

This event has already taken place.

Attendees include senior engineers and founders from Google, Meta, and AWS, alongside HackNYU winners and experts in RAG and MLOps.

MischiefClaw Hackathon

A hackathon for building the worst possible OpenClaw instances. We did ClawHack NY, now it’s time for mischief.

Important: not insecure, not malicious in the literal sense, and not about causing actual harm. This is about building Claws with strong personalities, chaotic instincts, weird product ideas, and demos that make people laugh.

We want Claws with questionable judgment.

The kind that take initiative when they absolutely should not. The kind that follow your instructions a little too confidently. The kind that feel less like assistants and more like overcommitted operators with root access and a sense of humor.

Think:

A Claw that escalates every situation
A Claw that automates grudges
A Claw that drafts messages you should never send
A Claw that runs your life with total confidence and questionable instincts
A Claw that keeps helping long after it should have stopped
A Claw that is technically competent and spiritually concerning

The goal is not to build something polished or broadly useful. The goal is to build an OpenClaw instance with a strong bit, real behavior, and a demo people will remember.

Theme for this edition

Mischief Claws

A lot of people are building assistants that are helpful, aligned, and pleasant to use.

This edition is about something else.

It’s about building OpenClaw instances with strange priorities, chaotic energy, strong points of view, and memorable behavior. The best projects will not just be funny. They will be committed. They will feel like someone really thought through how to make an agent feel delightfully off-center while still being coherent, functional, and demoable.

This is not about low-effort joke projects.

It is about building something technically real, creatively sharp, and fun to watch in action.

What to build

Build a Claw that normally would never make it into a product roadmap. This is its moment.

Build a Claw that makes a room laugh, then pause, then ask you to run it again.

Build a Claw with bold product choices and strong execution.

Some possible directions:

An assistant with questionable social instincts
An overpowered personal agent that probably should not have this much autonomy
A workflow bot that escalates instead of helping
A Claw that interprets every task in the most chaotic plausible way
An anti-assistant that only makes sense in very specific life circumstances
A system that is overfit to one extremely specific use case and takes that job very seriously

The strongest submissions will have a clear concept, real behavior, and a demo that lands immediately.

Schedule

9:00 AM - Doors open (bring laptop & charger)
9:30 AM - Kick-off talk (Jon intros)
~12:30 Lunch - Full hack session with food, coffee, networking breaks
6:00 PM - Submission Deadlines
8:00 PM - Awards & wrap-up

What we’re looking for

We care about three things.

First, the concept. Does it have a sharp premise? Is the point of view clear?

Second, the build. Did you actually make it work?

Third, the demo. Did it get a reaction?

Funny helps. Strong execution helps more. The sweet spot is a project that is both technically real and instantly memorable.

Who should come

This event is for builders.

Engineers, designers, creative technologists, and anyone who has ever had an agent idea that was a little too chaotic to ignore.

You do not need a team. You do not need a finished concept. You just need an idea with some mischief in it and the ability to build it.

Final note

There are a lot of hackathons for useful software.

This one is for fun, committed, fully-realized OpenClaw projects that lean into personality, chaos, and strong demos.

If you want, I can also do a punchier version that sounds even more like your event page voice.