Cursor Builder Battle

The format

Together with Alex Ribin, we brought sixteen competitors together for a tournament-style evening. Each round had a specific challenge to complete in Cursor — ten minutes to build, one minute to demo, then the audience voted on who moved forward.

It was high energy throughout: techno on the speakers, battles running in one corner, live demos in another. Attendees could follow whichever thread they wanted. We packed the room with around sixty people out of the roughly seventy-five who signed up on Luma.

Winning the crowd takes a mix of fast prompting and engaging presentation. Because the clock is so tight, competitors push Cursor hard — both finalists built workflows to spin up multiple options at once and pick the best one to show.

What worked

• The format. Fun to compete in, fun to watch, fun to demo. The short rounds keep everything moving.
• Live audience voting. We vibe-coded a voting app on ficus.io so attendees could vote from their phones during each demo — no friction, no paper slips.
• Zero-to-demo. Our local partners ran the stage, mic, music, and flow. They’ve been hosting weekend hackathons in Copenhagen and made the whole thing feel effortless.
• The venue. BLOXHUB was ideal — indoor competition space with a seamless step-out into the garden for fresh air between rounds.

What we’ll improve

• Screen sharing. OBS worked well as the main orchestrator, but casting quality through vdo.ninja was rough. We’ll find a smoother streaming setup for the next one.
• Competitor lock-in. A few last-minute cancellations meant we pulled substitutes from the audience — which worked, but next time we’ll get competitors into a dedicated WhatsApp group at least a week ahead so everyone’s onboarded before event day.

Thanks

Shoutout to Alf and Gisle — our Norwegian ambassadors who came down to prestige the event. And to everyone who competed, voted, cheered, or just watched what happens when talented builders get a ridiculous prompt and ten minutes on the clock.