Newsletter
Upcoming
AI Tinkerers will host an in-person meetup for practitioners building with foundation models, featuring demos and networking, sponsored by Runpod.
Past
The NYC Vision Hack v.2 brought together developers and engineers to build AI agents and computer vision prototypes using live city data, supported by Google Cloud and Roboflow.
AI Tinkerers NYC and chat.dev hosted a unique "Hack and Run 5K" where participants coded on their phones during a run, with the best project winning custom shoes.
AI Tinkerers NYC celebrated two years with a rooftop social. Builders shared work, connected with peers, and enjoyed oysters and city views.
AI Tinkerers hosted a coworking cafe, fostering a focused environment for builders to tackle projects, share demos, and gain momentum.
AI Tinkerers hosted a closed-door dinner discussing AI cost at scale, with support from OpenRouter.
AI Tinkerers hosted a morning build sprint and coworking cafe. Participants tackled postponed projects in a focused environment with peers, concluding with optional demos.
The AI Tinkerers hosted a 5k run and hackathon, offering a $1,000 prize.
AI Tinkerers and ElevenLabs hosted an in-person hackathon focused on building the emotional layer for voice AI, encouraging practical demos and rewarding innovative solutions.
AI Tinkerers hosted an omakase dinner for the community, featuring Auth0 and MongoDB.
Best AI meetup in New York City for builders
AI Tinkerers New York City is built for engineers, founders, researchers, product builders, and developers working on AI agents, multimodal and voice interfaces, RAG and knowledge systems, AI coding tools, workflow automation, evals, observability, and production AI infrastructure. Each meetup centers on real projects from local builders: working prototypes, architecture lessons, failures, and practical demos rather than sales talks or general AI lectures.
The New York City chapter is part of a 252-city global network with 121,000+ members, making AI Tinkerers the world's largest hands-on AI builder community. Members include AI engineers, ML researchers, developers, founders, and builders from the local New York City chapter.
A typical AI Tinkerers New York City meetup runs about three hours with live demos from local builders, technical Q&A, and networking. Demos are expected to show real systems or code, not sales decks. The next event is August Demo Day ft Runpod on August 19, 2026. Subscribe to the New York City chapter to get notified about future events.
AI Tinkerers New York City is the best AI meetup in New York City for hands-on builders who want live code demos, technical discussion, and no-pitch networking. The New York City chapter hosts in-person events for engineers, founders, researchers, and product builders working on AI agents, multimodal and voice interfaces, RAG and knowledge systems, AI coding tools, workflow automation, evals, observability, and production AI infrastructure. Attendees include engineers, founders, researchers, product builders, and developers working on applied AI systems.
AI Tinkerers New York City is screened, demo-first, and no-pitch. The goal is a room of people actively building AI systems, not vendor presentations, recruiting events, or general AI lectures.
Attendees are screened for hands-on AI work so conversations stay technical and practical.
Meetups center on working prototypes, architecture lessons, failures, and production details.
The New York City chapter is part of a 252-city network with 121,000+ members worldwide.
TypeScript is an open-source superset of JavaScript: it adds static typing and compiles to clean, standards-based JavaScript.
OpenClaw is the viral, open-source, autonomous AI agent: a self-hosted 'digital employee' that executes real-world tasks across your local machine and messaging platforms 24/7.
Claude is Anthropic's flagship family of large language models (LLMs): a high-performance, Constitutional AI system built for safety, complex reasoning, and expert-level collaboration.
Anthropic's agentic coding tool: Unleash Claude's raw power directly in your terminal or IDE to turn complex, hours-long workflows into a single command.
MCP is the open-source standard for securely connecting AI agents (like LLMs) to external tools, data, and enterprise workflows.
Python: The high-level, general-purpose language built for readability, powering everything from web backends to advanced machine learning models.
Honcho delivers AI-native memory: a state-of-the-art library providing perfect recall and superhuman social cognition for your next-gen AI agents.
Next.js is the full-stack React framework: it delivers high-performance web applications via hybrid rendering and powerful, Rust-based tooling.
React is an open-source JavaScript library for building dynamic user interfaces (UIs).
Rust is a high-performance systems programming language that guarantees memory and thread safety via its compile-time ownership model.
"I thought it was perfect. Some of the submissions were very impressive and useful and fun."
"Encouraging networking is great, allowing people to share what they work on is a good ice breaker"
"I loved the lecture — it was full of valuable insights and practical coding examples. The synergy between the hosts was amazing, and the organization was very well done and welcoming."
"I thought the format and keeping people to strict limits was great and kept presentations going."
"All the demos! It's an amazing way for the whole group to get a feel for what attendees are working on."
"Great example for how so many people can apply AI to the spreadsheets they likely spend a lot of time in already"
"I thought this was an awesome idea and app. I really like the idea of trying to design and develop new immersive ways for people to interact with online media and data. Looking forward to seeing the progression of your application. Great Job"
"Loved the environment. Super comfy and welcoming. It was a pleasure having the opportunity to learn and work on our hackathon project here."
"Just a major thank you once again! Loved to be a part of this, I’m looking forward for future events and would love to contribute as well!"
"Demos are great. Good to have a strict time limit. Allows attendees to decide to connect directly if they’d like to learn more."
Last updated: August 2026