AI Tinkerers × Google — Gemini CLI Buildathon

Theme: Creative, Personal & Local

Format: 4‑hour in‑person Buildathon — fast, focused, ship‑something energy.

Focus: Show what’s possible when Gemini CLI talks directly to your local environment — files, data, scripts, sensors, shell tools. No production deploy required.

🔍 About the Buildathon

Re‑imagine the command line as your personal AI studio. In a fast 4‑hour sprint, teams will prototype headless AI agents and workflows that call the Google Gemini CLI / API to do useful, locally grounded things.

See the Gemini CLI github here

Why local? Because the most valuable AI often starts close to home—where your notes, data, and daily tools already live. Think:

• Research Wrangler: Sweep a downloads folder full of PDFs, auto‑extract key findings, build structured notes.
• Story Forge: Generate a custom bedtime story plus image assets saved to disk and ready to AirDrop to a tablet.
• Writing Stitcher: Feed a plain‑English outline + scattered markdown notes; have Gemini assemble a cohesive short story.
• CLI Lab Assistant: Natural‑language wrapper around shell commands that can search, transform, and summarize project files.
• Data‑Aware Agents: Use local CSVs, logs, or config files to personalize outputs, alerts, or dashboards.

Bring whatever local data you’re comfortable using. Synthetic / sample data is fine.

☝️ RSVP now. Space is limited. ☝️

🏆 Judging Criteria (100 pts)

Projects are scored across four weighted dimensions. Judges will use a shared rubric; ties break on Impact.

Tip: Production deployment is not required. Focus on a compelling prototype that clearly shows how Gemini CLI enables the use case.

🎤 Live Google Kick‑Off Session (11:00 AM)

At 11:00 AM we kick off with a lightning demo + quickstart from Jerop Kipruto from Google who will walk through all you need to know to get started with Gemini CLI and some tips and inspiration for your project.

📋 Submission Requirements

To be eligible for judging, each team must submit by 3:00 PM (local) on September 6th:

1. Code Repository
Public or invite‑only (grant judge access). Include install + run instructions.

2. ≤ 3‑Minute Demo Video
Screen‑capture is fine. We must see it run: what it does, how Gemini is used, what local resources it touches, and why it matters.

3. Short README Checklist
Include: problem/use case; how to run; where Gemini is called; what’s local; what’s hard/interesting; what’s next.

Optional Extras: sample outputs, test scripts, or a small dataset to reproduce.

🏅 Prizes

For each team that submits a winning project, each team member will receive a Google swag code! Google-branded swag like sweatshirts, drinkware, stationery, backpack, tech accessories, water bottles, beach accessories etc.

👥 Who Should Join?

• Startup builders exploring personal AI tooling.
• ML engineers & data folks curious about local agent workflows.
• CLI power users who script everything.
• Students / researchers who want fast, scrappy prototyping with foundation models.
• Designers / storytellers who like mixing assets, prompts, and automation.

All skill levels welcome; cross‑functional teams often ship the coolest stuff.

☝️ RSVP now. Space is limited. ☝️

🧰 What to Bring

• Laptop with terminal access.
• Local files or sample data you can legally use.
• GitHub account.
• (Optional) APIs, sensors, or tools you want to integrate.

We’ll provide: Gemini CLI quickstart, starter repo scaffolding, sample prompts, and office‑hours style roaming mentors.

📅 Event Flow — Sept 6th

10:00 AM Doors Open

11:00 AM Kick‑off + Google Gemini CLI Demo / Quickstart

11:30 AM Team formation / environment checks / idea lock‑in

12:00 PM Working lunch (keep building)

12:15–2:45 PM Build window (mentor loops, tech help)

2:45 PM Code freeze / capture demo video

3:00 PM Submissions due (repo + ≤3‑min demo video)

3:15 PM Quick judging & lightning demos (select teams)

4:00 PM Wrap / swag codes follow.

📣 Beyond the Event: Keep Contributing

This buildathon is just the beginning. Google will be tracking:

• Issues filed and feature requests raised
• Pull requests opened & merged
• How many hackers become ongoing contributors to Gemini CLI

Your contributions may be credited in future Gemini CLI releases.

🚀 Ready to Build?

☝️ RSVP now. Space is limited. ☝️

Sponsors

Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated and optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner.

Betaworks - Betaworks has been a foundational part of the NYC tech ecosystem for the last 15 years – first, as a startup studio building brands you know and love like Giphy, Tweetdeck, Bit.ly, and Dots, and more recently as a pre-seed and seed-stage investor in companies like HuggingFace and Stability AI, among many others.