The results are in for our DEV Weekend Challenge: Dog Days Edition! Thank you for your patience while we worked through judging, and thank you for the volume and quality of what you sent us.
We asked you to build something for, about, or inspired by dogs ahead of International Dog Day. What came back was even cuter than expected: from an OS for dogs to several canine translators and a wide array of doggie dashboards. We had so much fun going through your submissions.
Now, let's celebrate our winners!
🎉 Congratulations To…
Overall Winner
@jonathansolvesstuff built a live board of every dog at Austin Animal Center with an intake record and no outcome record. After looking at the data, they concluded that "black dog syndrome" turned out to be a false flag. What sealed it for us was not only the care taken with the build, but also the thoughtful analysis of the data.
Best Use of Snowflake
@soumyadeepdey set out to catch a limp that a dog can't tell you about, using ten million rows of collar data from a wearable sensor. The trick is that a limp isn't one number going up, it's a pattern over time: walk, stop, walk a little, stop again, and averaging the day away erases exactly that pattern. He used Snowflake to search for that exact sequence directly in the data and pull out the specific seconds that gave it away, so every result comes with evidence attached.
Best Use of Solana
@kakeroth built ChainPaws to fix a genuinely rotten problem: when your dog goes missing, most of the "I found him!" messages you get are scammers trying to extort a reward. ChainPaws puts your dog's ID and the reward money on the Solana blockchain instead, so the payout only goes through once someone actually proves they found your dog, no wire transfers to strangers required. It's a real working smart contract with tests to back it up, not just a mockup of the idea.
Best Use of ElevenLabs
@abeera_lodhi took eight real shelter listings and had ElevenLabs read each one twice: once in a cheerful stock voice, and once in a voice built from scratch to match what's actually in that dog's file. Flip between the two mid sentence and you hear the gap between the marketing and the dog. A genuinely novel use of Elevenlabs technology, where abstract data manifests in something you can hear.
Best Use of Google AI
@vikram003 built Fetch'd, a swipe app for shelter adoptions with a twist: the dog gets a say too, not just the human. Gemini does two jobs behind the scenes, reading a scanned vet intake form into usable info, then comparing that against what an adopter says about their home to write one honest sentence about whether it's a good fit. No score, no percentage match, just a real observation, or a question back to you if there isn't enough info yet to say anything useful.
Prizes
All five winners will receive:
- $200 USD
- DEV++ Membership
- Exclusive winner badge
All participants with a valid submission will receive a completion badge on their DEV profile.
What's Next?
Two new challenges are on the way! Register for both so you don't miss the official announcements.
Sanity Challenge
September 18, 2026We are thrilled to partner with Sanity to bring the community a new challenge! Stay tuned by signing up so you don't miss the official announcement.
Kaggle Benchmark Writing Challenge
September 23, 2026We are thrilled to partner with Kaggle to bring the community a new challenge! Stay tuned by signing up so you don't miss the official announcement.