170 Builders, 5 Countries, Zero Traditional Coding

Last week, Vilnius became the home of something unprecedented in Lithuania: the country's largest in-person vibecoding hackathon.

Over five days, 170 builders from 12 universities across Lithuania, Germany, Latvia, Belgium, and India gathered to build functional applications – without writing a single line of traditional code.

What happened

Builders described what they wanted to create in natural language. AI app builders and bolt.new generated the code. They iterated, tested, and refined.

By Friday, they were demoing working prototypes to investors and industry leaders.

Among our participants: aspiring founders, product builders, designers, and domain experts from physiotherapy to sports science. Many had never touched code before. By the end of the week, they had working apps ready to launch.

The winning projects

Testing ideas before they become failures

🥇 First Place: FocusAI — Taran Murugan Rekha & Aarti Seth

A virtual focus group tool that lets entrepreneurs test product ideas with AI-powered "users" – different personalities who debate each other, simulating real consumer dynamics.

When Aarti joined 36 hours late, she had a choice: play it safe or go all in. She chose the latter – coding through the remaining days, building the entire backend herself, and submitting with just two minutes to spare.

"I have vibecoded before and did not have very high expectations. But I was very impressed by the vibes and the competition – especially in a business school."

— Taran

"Instead of spending hours stuck on syntax, I could focus on what I wanted to create. That was decisive – especially building the entire backend throughout almost all the hackathon days."

— Aarti

Both left more confident as builders. "It made me more confident in rapidly prototyping and launching ideas into the real world," Taran reflects. "I'd recommend vibecoding to everyone."

When your dog's collar knows something you don't

🥈 Second Place: Tailysis — Danielius Gelumbauskas, Rugilė Noreikaitė & Aleksas Petravičius

Dogs show internal stress and health signals long before humans can see visible symptoms. Tailysis addresses this with a biometric collar that monitors heart rate, temperature, and movement – translating raw data into understandable signals about a pet's emotional and physical state.

"Intense, productive, and actually fun. I learned new tools, built a working prototype, and met people who think the same way. It was worth it."

— Aleksas

Automating physiotherapy without replacing physiotherapists

🥉 Third Place: KineziAI — Daumantė Petraitytė & Margarita Sivačiova

Both team members are practicing physiotherapists who saw the same problem daily: specialists overloaded with work, patients waiting months for appointments, therapists spending hours on routine exercise program design.

KineziAI analyzes video recordings of patient movements and automatically generates personalized exercise programs – while keeping the specialist in control.

"What encouraged us to join was the fact that no prior experience was required. We were simply excited to create and explore something new."

— Daumantė

"Absolutely – we would highly recommend it. You don't need extensive experience or a perfectly formed concept. Simply being in a creative environment, meeting motivated people, talking to mentors, and hearing their insights provides value that anyone can carry into the future."

— Team KineziAI

Other outstanding projects

Best Voice App (ElevenLabs): Reconnect Generations — A platform that preserves grandparents' voices and stories as interactive digital memory twins. By Rokas Alešiūnas, Emilis Zabilius, Liutauras Cijunskis, Motiejus Bucinskas

Best Design (WhyTheDuck): Nearbuy — A local inventory search tool built by a mixed Lithuanian-German team. By Jann Brunken, Linus Hagge, Joris Mackevičius, Kasparas Sasnauskas

Public Vote + Best Vibecoding Project: WALKY DOGGY — An app that encourages walking through virtual pet care. By Ravi Joshi, Julija Osipova, Ratmir Kutuzov, Pranava Kumar Krishna Kumar

Best AI Wrapper (Supercorp): Planaging — Smart planning and managing powered by AI. By Damian Gaidukevič, Martynas Žemaitis, Motiejus Petronis

OAG Innovation Award: AERO — An enhanced airports app. By Auksė Uršulė Rudzikaitė, Ieva Bigailaitė

Best Financial Innovation (StockInvest) — Three teams were recognized: Flip AI, InvestoLight, and INNVOS (which also won Best Demo from Screen Studio).

The team behind it

The hackathon was organized by Vaida Bitvinskė, alongside Justina Janušonytė and Gabrielė Bieliauskaitė.

"We wanted this event to serve the entire builder community, not just one institution. Creating spaces where people can rapidly prototype, test, and implement their ideas is essential for Lithuania's startup ecosystem to grow."

— Vaida Bitvinskė

Mentors and judges

The hackathon's success depended on experienced founders, investors, and industry professionals who volunteered their time throughout the week.

Mentors: Donatas Mažeika, Almantas Karpavičius, Roman Lobas, Milda Vilčinskaitė, Jokūbas Vaičiulis, Martynas Cepas, Jonė Vaitulevičiūtė, Mahdi Shariff, Domas Bitvinskas, Kipras Vaičekauskas, Katrė Zienkaitė, Ignas Grigaliūnas, Ugnius Ramanauskas, Tomas Šiurna, Ignas Survila, Cédric Charpenet

Preselection Judges: Tomas Šiurna, Vaida Bitvinskė, Domas Bitvinskas, Eigirdas Žemaitis, Kipras Vaičekauskas

Demo Day Judges: Eigirdas Žemaitis, Kipras Vaičekauskas, Marija Milaševičiūtė, Gabrielius Mažeikis, Ignas Grigaliūnas, Benvenutas Grinius

Thank you to our partners

Main Partners: ISM, bolt.new

Community Partners: OAG, Oxylabs

Supporters: Google Cloud, 4Beta, ElevenLabs, Screen Studio, Supercorp, Rockit, WhyTheDuck, Humble AI, Brite, Firecrawl, AddEvent, Helmes, Robinhood, Haus of Wllnss, Natively, Caffeine, Swedbank, StockInvest.us, ScrapingBee, Gymplius, Firstpick, Nestlé, Rimi

Media Partners: Unicorns Lithuania, Startup Lithuania, The Feedsmiths

What's next

Given the overwhelming interest and growing international participation, we're already planning next year's edition – with even more builders and partners from abroad.

The message from this year's hackathon is clear: the barrier between having an idea and building it has never been lower.