Where you live
Your neighbourhood, body corporate, residents' association or community safety group. Think fault reporting, levy queries, visitor access, load-shedding and water notices.
Community Hackathon · 5 - 19 October 2026
Agents for your community.
Find a problem that burdens the people around you. Solve it with agentic AI on UiPath. Show us in a video. You have two weeks.
Kick-off in
5 October 2026
Kick-off 09:00 SAST Submissions close 19 October, 23:59 SAST
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The brief
One real burden. One agent that lifts it.
The challenge
Find a problem that burdens your community today, and use agentic AI on the UiPath platform to solve it.
The background
Every community runs on unpaid admin. The volunteer who answers the same forty questions every week. The treasurer reconciling payments at midnight. The clinic queue nobody can see the end of. The WhatsApp group where the one message that mattered got buried. These are not glamorous problems, and that is exactly why nobody has solved them.
Agentic AI changes what a small team can build in two weeks. An agent can read, reason, decide, act across systems, and ask a human when it is unsure. That is a very good fit for the messy, judgement-heavy work that communities depend on and that classic rule-based automation could never quite reach.
Your mission
Pick a community you belong to or can genuinely reach. Go and talk to the people in it. Find one specific, recurring burden - something that costs real people real time, money or energy right now. Then design and build an agentic solution on UiPath technology that takes that burden away, and prove it works.
What we are looking for
- A real problem, with a real owner. Not a hypothetical. Name the community, name who carries the burden, and tell us what it costs them today.
- Agentic AI at the core. The agent must do meaningful reasoning and take action - not just answer questions. If you could swap it for a fixed script and lose nothing, it is not agentic enough.
- Built on UiPath. The solution must be built on UiPath technology, with the agent itself running on the UiPath platform. You can connect to other systems and services, but UiPath is the foundation, not a bolt-on.
- A working solution. Scope it small enough to finish. A narrow thing that works beats a grand thing that does not.
- Something people can actually use. The person carrying the burden should be able to pick it up without you in the room.
- Built responsibly. Keep a human in the loop where the stakes are high, and protect the people whose data you touch.
Where to look
"Community" is wider than you think.
Any group of people you are part of and can talk to this week counts. Start with the people, not the technology.
Where you learn
A school, campus, tutoring programme or parent body. Think timetable clashes, bursary applications, lift clubs, permission slips and study support.
Where you give back
An NPO, clinic, food bank, animal shelter, faith group or sports club. Think volunteer rosters, donor follow-ups, intake forms and grant reporting.
Where you work and build
Your user group, developer community, small-business network or team. Think onboarding newcomers, event logistics, knowledge that lives in one person's head.
Signs you have found a good problem
- You can name the person who does this work today
- It happens again and again, not once a year
- It needs judgement, reading or conversation - not just copy and paste
- You can measure it: hours, rands, missed cases, waiting time
- That person would use your solution next week if it worked
What makes a solution "agentic"
- It is given a goal, not a fixed list of steps
- It reasons over messy input: messages, documents, images, voice
- It uses tools and takes actions in other systems
- It handles exceptions and knows when to escalate to a human
- It works alongside automations, apps and people as one process
- It is built and run on the UiPath platform
The timeline
Two weeks, start to submit.
A suggested pace. How you spend the fourteen days is up to you - only the start and the deadline are fixed.
Kick-off
The brief goes live and the clock starts. Form your team and choose your community.
Discover
Talk to the people who carry the burden. Pin down one problem and what it costs today.
Design
Sketch the solution. Decide which UiPath products are involved and what the agent is responsible for.
Build and test
Get the happy path working end to end first, then harden it. Put it in front of a real user.
Guide and record
Write the user guide, rehearse the demo, and record your video presentation.
Submissions close
Your video must be in by 23:59 SAST. Late entries cannot be judged.
What to submit
One video. Five chapters.
Your entry is a single video presentation of up to 10 minutes. It must cover these five things, in this order. The timings are a guide.
Present the problem ~1.5 min
Who is the community, and who carries this burden? What happens today, how often, and what does it cost? Make us feel why it is worth solving.
Present the design ~2 min
Show an architecture diagram of your solution and name every UiPath product involved, plus anything else it connects to. Explain what each one does, where the agent sits, what tools and data it can reach, and where a human steps in.
Explain it like I'm five ~1 min
Now explain the solution with no jargon at all - as if to someone from the community who has never heard of an agent. If a ten-year-old would not follow it, simplify it again.
Demo the solution working ~4 min
Run it for real, end to end, on a realistic scenario. Show the agent reasoning and acting, not just the final result. Include at least one exception or edge case and how it is handled.
Walk through the user guide ~1.5 min
Show the guide you wrote for the people who will use this, and demonstrate a user following it: how they start, what they see, what to do when something goes wrong, and who to ask for help.
Submission checklist
Before you send it in, check that you have:
- One video, 10 minutes or less
- All five chapters, clearly signposted
- A design slide naming the UiPath products used
- A live demo, not just screenshots
- The user guide shown on screen
- Team name and member names on the first slide
- No real personal or sensitive data visible
- A link that works for someone who is not logged in
How it is judged
Impact first. Polish second.
Community impact · 25%
Is the problem real, specific and worth solving? Is it clear who benefits and by how much?
Agentic design · 25%
Is the agent doing genuine reasoning and action? Is the design sound, with the right UiPath products in the right roles and sensible human oversight?
Working solution · 20%
Does the demo run end to end? Does it cope when something unexpected happens?
Clarity · 15%
Could someone outside tech understand what it does and why it matters after your ELI5?
Usability · 15%
Could the community pick this up and use it from your user guide, without you in the room?
The rules
Simple rules, fair play.
Taking part
- Open to everyone in the community, at any experience level
- Enter solo or as a team of up to four
- One submission per team
- The solution must be built on UiPath technology
- It must be built during the hackathon window
- Existing templates, connectors and libraries are fine - say what you reused
Building responsibly
- Use test or anonymised data - never real personal information on screen
- Get permission from the community you are building for
- Keep a human in the loop for decisions that affect people
- Be honest about what the agent cannot do yet
- Your work stays yours - we only ask to share your video
Ready to build?
Find the burden. Build the agent.
Tell us you are in
Send your team name and members so we know to expect you.
Build from 5 October
Two weeks to find the problem, design, build and test.
Record your video
Five chapters, 10 minutes or less.
Submit by 19 October
Use the submission form below before 23:59 SAST.
Enter or ask a question
Register your team or ask anything about the brief.
✉ jscott@i1solutions.co.za in linkedin.com/in/jarryd-scott