Sync & local-first systems
CRDTs, sync engines, offline stores. Currently reproducing the Automerge performance paper and writing up where it holds.
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Between the deadlines
Hackathons are the heartbeat, not the whole body. This is the rest of it: standing research groups, twice-weekly co-working rooms, a review economy that actually works, and the fastest way on the internet to find a teammate in your timezone.
Research circles
Small standing groups — six to twelve builders — that read papers, reproduce results and publish notes together. Circles run on a term system: eight weeks, one artefact at the end. Tier III unlocks founding your own.
Small language models
Everything under 3B parameters. Distillation, quantisation, and the honest limits of tiny models. Co-authored a preprint in March.
Systems performance
Profilers before opinions. Reading the classic latency literature and benchmarking real OSS codebases against it.
Interfaces & accessibility
Screen readers, keyboard-first design, and why most dev tools fail both. Building an a11y test corpus as this term's artefact.
Distributed games
Netcode, rollback, prediction. The circle behind two Game Jam podiums. Waitlist opens for the autumn term.
Reproducibility
Founded by three Reproduce-the-Paper veterans. Picking apart what makes published results run — and what quietly doesn't.
23 circles active this term · applications reviewed weekly
Build nights
Open voice rooms, twice a week, every week. Bring the thing you're stuck on; someone in the room has been stuck there before. Cameras optional, always.
| Room | When | Host | Usual turnout |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Long Roomquiet co-working, one shared music bot | Tue 18:00–23:00 UTC | @deskrejected | 60–90 |
| Rubber Duck Rowtalk through your bug until it confesses | Tue 19:00–21:00 UTC | rotating | 20–35 |
| The Saturday Sessiondemos at the top of every hour | Sat 15:00–22:00 UTC | @mira.wav | 80–120 |
| First Timers' Tableyour first build night, hosted gently | Sat 16:00–18:00 UTC | community team | 15–25 |
Review exchange
Post your code, get a structured review from a builder one tier above you — then pay it forward to someone one tier below. Reviews rated helpful earn 15 rank points, so the feedback economy stays honest.
Ask
Submit a repo and three questions you actually want answered. Vague requests get bounced back with a template.
Receive
A reviewer from the tier above claims it within 48 hours. Reviews follow a fixed rubric: correctness, clarity, next steps.
Rate
You rate the review's usefulness. Helpful reviewers earn points; careless ones stop getting matched.
Repay
Your queue unlocks after you review someone newer. 1,913 reviews exchanged so far this year.
Team finder
Filter open builders by timezone, stack and rank. Send one message, form a team in two clicks. 71% of last season's podium teams met exactly this way.
| Builder | Tier | Stack | Timezone | Looking for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| @mereb.devbackend, likes hard sync problems | Artisan | Go · Postgres · TS | UTC+3 | № 032 team |
| @quietlyshippingfrontend with service-worker scars | Artisan | TS · React · Rust | UTC−5 | № 032 team |
| @lina.compilesfirst hackathon, strong fundamentals | Novice | Python · C | UTC+1 | any team |
| @osei.codeswill join one team per season, choose wisely | Luminary | Rust · Zig · TS | UTC+0 | game jam |
312 builders currently open to teams · sign in to appear here
The house rules
Short on purpose.
- Punch up your work, not people. Critique code fiercely, treat humans gently. No exceptions for being right.
- Newcomers are the point. Everyone here was once the person asking the obvious question. Answer it the way you wish someone had.
- Credit flows outward. Name your collaborators, cite your sources, link the Stack Overflow answer.
- Compete clean. The leaderboard only means something because nobody games it. Reports are read by humans within 24 hours.
The full code of conduct and enforcement process is linked from every room and board. Moderation decisions are logged publicly, minus personal details.
Join the community
free forever for individual builders · first build night is this saturday