The App Builder Challenge Results Are In
Winners, lessons learned, and proof that building through conversation actually works
Last week, we threw down the gauntlet: we asked the entire Kilo community to go wild with App Builder, one of our latest features that lets you build real web apps and sites through natural conversation.
The challenge: Build something cool with App Builder, deploy it, and share the URL with us. The first place winner takes home $500 in Kilo Credits.
The results: Creative, innovative, and (sometimes) unhinged in the best possible ways!
The Winners
All of the submissions were incredible, which made it difficult for us to choose just three. The following projects weren’t just interesting—they had the Kilo team addicted:
🥇 First Place: Wombatochi by Javier Coll
1st place winner Javier Coll built a living digital pet that actually needs care. A genuine virtual companion that’ll make you feel guilty if you forget about it. Javier went full Tamagotchi nostalgia but made it feel 2026. The fact this exists, and works, and was built entirely through conversation is absolutely wild!
Connect with Javier on LinkedIn and Instagram, and check out Wombatochi here:
🥈 Second Place: Polyrhythm Metronome by Jędrzej Smal
This one was really creative. Built for the musicians who think in multiple time signatures simultaneously, or for anyone that likes interesting beats. Layer 7/8 over 5/4. Customize every sound. Make rhythm patterns that would make your high school band teacher weep. Built with App Builder, deployed in minutes, ready to make complex polyrhythms accessible to anyone!
Find Jed on Linkedin, and try the Polyrhythm Metronome here:
🥉 Third Place: Triple Town-ish
Keith Hall built Triple Town-ish, a deterministic merge puzzle game where every move matters. 6×6 grid, match-three mechanics, and chain reactions for points. The kind of game you open “just for a minute” and suddenly it’s 3am. Pure gameplay, zero friction, shipped to production.
Connect with Keith on LinkedIn and GitHub, and play a game of Triple Town-ish here:
These projects weren’t throwaway mockups. These were real apps that people actually built, deployed, and shared — and that’s the whole point of App Builder.
What App Builder Actually Does
For those who don’t know, here’s how it works: open App Builder in a browser tab, describe what you want to build, and watch AI construct it in real-time. There’s a live preview running next to the chat, which updates when you suggest changes. When you’re happy with it, one button deploys it to production with a real URL that you can share immediately.
The difference between App Builder and other similar tools like Lovable and Bolt is that App Builder is part of the Kilo agentic engineering platform, which means that you can build prototypes that aren’t dead ends.
You can prototype in App Builder, and then export the code to do deeper engineering in the IDE or Kilo CLI. You aren’t exporting into the void, you’re working through an end-to-end agentic engineering experience.
Plus, you use the same AI usage credits in App Builder that you use everywhere else in Kilo - which means you only need to manage one account for all of your agentic engineering needs.
What We Learned From this Challenge
Building Through Conversation Actually Works
People built things they actually cared about. Not throwaway demos. Real projects. Javier kept iterating until Wombatochi had personality. Jed refined the rhythm engine through multiple prompts. These were passion projects with real value, and knowing that they came together through conversation was genuinely cool to witness.
The one-shot builds were shockingly good. “[App Builder] made it easy,” one person said. Another mentioned that watching different models tackle the same problem head-to-head was like some kind of “AI bracket tournament”.
Shipping is fast. “Completed my site in under 2 hours,” someone told us. Another went from idea to deployed URL in a single, 30 minute session. That’s not “fast for development.” That’s “faster than explaining your idea in a meeting.”
Another builder said that the interface was “like opening an iPhone - you know exactly how to start.”
That’s what we’re going for - to make the agentic engineering experience intuitive enough that speed happens naturally.
Model Freedom Matters in Every Scenario
People experimented with everything. Some chose free and fast models to get things done with minimal overhead. Others chose Claude Opus 4.5 for complex cases. Having 500+ models available means that you can find the exact tool for whatever you’re building.
“I tried many models during development,” one contestant told us, “and Anthropic Sonnet 4.5 was able to fully understand my intention based on the idea provided in the prompt.” That’s the power of choice - find what works for your specific project.
We Got A Lot of Great Feedback
Of course, App Builder is still new and people had plenty of ideas for how to make it better. The community gave us incredibly detailed feedback on features they want, workflow improvements, and stability enhancements. That’s exactly what we were hoping for - people pushing the tool hard enough to find the edges.
Why This Challenge Mattered
Watching hundreds of developers build real apps through conversation validated something important: this approach works. Not as a gimmick, not as a demo, but as a legitimate way to go from idea to deployed application.
A virtual pet with personality. A musician’s tool for complex polyrhythms. A puzzle game that’s actually fun to play. These aren’t AI slop. They’re things people wanted to build, iterate on, and ship.
And they did it all by describing what they wanted, and letting AI handle the implementation.
It’s Not Over Yet
As I mentioned earlier, the three winners were just a few of the many innovative, creative, and fun projects we received. So, we decided to open the challenge back up for one more Honorable Mention prize of $150 Kilo Credits!
Here’s how it’ll work:
We selected a handful of other submissions and loaded them onto an official voting page.
The Kilo Community has until Friday, January 16th at 11:59 pm EST to vote for their favorites.
The project with the most votes will win the Honorable Mention prize!
Here’s where you can vote:
If you competed, share the page with your friends and family, and start campaigning!
If you didn’t compete, go check out all of the projects and let us know your favorites - they’re all deployed to a shareable URL, so you can interact with the apps for real.
Try It Yourself
App Builder is live at app.kilo.ai/app-builder. It’s free to start, works with our several free models, and you can deploy your first app in minutes.
Describe what you want to build. Pick a model. Watch it come together. Deploy it with one click. Share the URL.
That’s it — That’s the whole flow.
We’re building in public and shipping improvements constantly. The community feedback from this challenge is directly shaping what we build next. If you try it and have thoughts, hit us up in Discord - we’re listening!
Thanks to everyone who participated and everyone who built something cool. You’re showing us what’s possible when you remove all the friction between having an idea and shipping it.
Now go make something fun. 🚀