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A coding competition where no one writes code was held. At 2 p.m. on the 18th, at an event venue in COEX in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, when the countdown ending the two-hour time limit finished, 99 startup developers pressed their faces close to their laptop screens and began tapping at their keyboards. It was a hackathon, a competition where participants develop coding results within a set time to test their skills.
The hackathon held that day was "Push to Prod Seoul," co-hosted by Anthropic, Replit, Korea Investment Partners, and Korea Investment Accelerator. Push to Prod is Anthropic's hackathon series, and this Korean event was the fourth held worldwide, following India, Singapore, and Finland. Within two hours, participants had to build information technology (IT) functions for actual internal company use or customer-facing IT services.
A distinctive feature of Push to Prod Seoul is that participants competed using vibe coding rather than writing code directly. Vibe coding refers to the practice of inputting natural-language commands using artificial intelligence (AI) services to generate coding results. Participants had to produce their results using only Claude Code, Anthropic's vibe coding tool, and Replit, a development collaboration tool for writing code in a web browser. Within the two-hour limit, all 38 participating startup teams succeeded in completing their results using only vibe coding.
In addition, special coaches appeared at Push to Prod Seoul. Headquarters developers from Anthropic and Replit visited the venue, answering participants' questions on the spot and providing one-on-one coaching. On-site participants asked about how to use Claude Code and Replit, and discussed ways to actually boost the efficiency of in-house development work. Lee Min-kyu, CEO of AskItMore who participated in the event, said, "I sought advice on how to get non-developer staff at the company started with vibe coding."
The hackathon was won that day by the startup HITS team. The HITS team developed "Hyper Scientist," an AI agent that integrates various information during the scientific research process and assists research work, earning high scores from the judges. The winning team received $5,000 worth of Claude Code usage rights and $5,000 worth of Replit usage rights. Danil Menlichenko, a HITS researcher, expressed confidence, saying, "What we showcased in today's competition was a very early version of Hyper Scientist," and "Based on the vibe coding tool usage rights secured by winning this hackathon, we will productize Hyper Scientist and contribute to the company's growth."
Anthropic and Replit, which held the event together with Korea Investment & Securities Group, said they would continue to work for the development of Korea's IT startup ecosystem. Megan Leung, head of international growth at Replit, emphasized, "Both Replit and Anthropic have growing interest in Korea, so we co-hosted the hackathon with Korea Investment & Securities Group," and "Replit plans to open an Asia-Pacific office, and we hope Korean startups will continue to create creative apps with our development tools."
Korea Investment & Securities Group also pledged support to invigorate the startup ecosystem. Yoo Dong-heon, head of the investment division at Korea Investment Accelerator, said, "To put value-creating tools in the hands of early-growth companies, we provided Anthropic and Replit usage rights to all companies participating in this hackathon, regardless of competition results." He added, "Korea Investment & Securities Group will spare no support needed across the entire growth cycle of companies."
