About the challengeWelcome to the Elasticsearch Agent Builder Hackathon, running from January 22 to February 27, 2026. Build context-driven, multi-step AI agents that combine search, workflows, tools, and reasoning to automate real-world tasks. This isn’t about single prompt answers, it’s about agents that retrieve the most relevant context, select the right tools, and execute tasks across multiple steps. Your mission is to design agents that actually get work done. Compete for a share of $20,000 in prizes, collaborate with Elastic engineers, and get featured on our blog and social channels. We can’t wait to see the agents you developWhy participate ?Build agents for real work:Design agents that reason, use tools, keep context, and actually finish tasks.Level up fast:Practice multi-step reasoning, tool orchestration, and stateful workflows under real constraints.Win and get seenThere is $20,000 on the table, plus exposure on blogs and social channels.What's Elasticsearch and Agent BuilderElasticsearchis an open source, distributed search and analytics engine built for speed, scale, and AI applications. As a retrieval platform, it stores structured, unstructured, and vector data in real time. It delivers fast hybrid and vector search, real-time analytics on logs, metrics or events, and enables AI-driven applications with high performance, accuracy, and relevance.Agent Builderis a framework to rapidly create custom agents that connect LLMs to private Elasticsearch data. Tailor tools to query indexes, trigger workflows, or use piped query language for logic, relevance, and personalization. It supports custom agents accessible via Kibana, APIs, MCP, and A2A.