Hello, Self-Writing Internet: Creations and Conversations

The pace of development of AI has been unyielding. There’s been plenty of discussion around “vibe coding,” but this is clearly just the beginning of something. So what’s next?

The internet and our digital lives are about to change fundamentally with the Self-Writing Internet.

In the form of Caffeine, the DFINITY Foundation has created a fully end-to-end, decentralized AI development platform. This goes beyond the promise of vibe coding, which is limited more to developers. Caffeine will enable everyone, technical and non-technical, to define their digital world on their terms.

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At Dogpatch Studios in San Francisco, the Hello, Self-Writing Internet event brought together 1,000 people in person and 50,000 on the livestream to feature the first-ever Caffeine hackathon and discussions on the future it promises. This article captures some of the highlights of the day, demonstrating the possibilities of Caffeine and the key questions raised by the new paradigm.

The Wait is Over

For those in attendance and watching online eager to get their hands on the new technology, a key announcement came when Dominic Williams, Founder and Chief Scientist of the DFINITY Foundation, took to the stage.

> “Tomorrow, we’re starting to give people access to those who’ve signed up for the alpha,” he revealed. “It’s going to roll out slowly and carefully, but please make sure you’re in the line if you want to try it.”

This marked the official opening of Caffeine to the public. Invite codes are being released on a rolling basis, giving the first users the opportunity to start building apps just by talking.

While the announcement highlighted how Caffeine is being opened up to the world, a select group at the event was already putting this promise to the test.

The First Caffeine Hackathon

> “If you can describe it, Caffeine can build it.”

— Bruno Calabretta, Head of Ecosystem Hubs, The DFINITY Foundation

At the Caffeine hackathon, the atmosphere was electric as a packed room of 80 creators, split evenly between technical and non-technical backgrounds, prepared to make history. The goal was clear: bring an idea to life.

The creators took this to heart, diving into their projects with such focus that some did not want to take breaks. The energy was infectious; soon, participants were answering each other’s questions with the suggestion to “Just ask Caffeine!”

“The feedback and the response were amazing,” said Bruno Calabretta, who coordinated the hackathon. “People were so ecstatic about Caffeine, how it works, what they can do with it.”

A dynamic emerged between the two tracks. Participants with technical backgrounds initially approached Caffeine as a traditional coding tool. They realized they did not have to write code from scratch, but could instead leverage their expertise to refine what Caffeine built.

The non-technical participants, however, came with a different mindset. “Non-technical people, they really came with the goal of exploring, of seeing what could come out of it,” Bruno observed. “They knew that they had an idea…and they tried for six hours to make it a reality. And the reality is that it happened pretty fast.” This allowed them to spend most of their time collecting feedback and improving the user experience, a crucial part of product development. The results were staggering, proving that a background in programming is no longer a prerequisite for application creation.

Hackathon Winners

After hours of intense creation, the numbers spoke for themselves. While participants could only make one final submission, over 240 apps were created from scratch throughout the day, resulting in over 75 final submissions for the judges. Some projects also went through 10 to 25 iterations.

As the deadline approached, the collective focus was so intense that when asked if they needed more time, the room answered “Yes” as one, earning them another fifteen minutes of creation.

From this incredible pool of creativity, the judges selected the winners from each track, with a prize pool of $25,000 for first place, $12,000 for second, and $7,500 for third in both categories.

The winning projects were announced on the main stage to close the event.

Technical Track Winners

* **First Place:** Road Patrol, which enables citizens to improve their cities through map-based reporting, including things such as potholes, broken street lights and more.
* **Second Place:** K, which scans your AI generated apps and projects for security gaps and other vulnerabilities.
* **Third Place:** SkillSprout, which makes learning new skills more engaging by enabling you to collect points and achievements.

Non-Technical Track Winners

* **First Place:** BlueLens, which enables you to monitor the safety of your drinking water with real-time data and analytics, including an integrated AI chat tool.
* **Second Place:** Will Maker, which allows you to generate legal documentation such as a will, power of attorney, and healthcare directives for California.
* **Third Place:** DentalTracks, which enables you to accumulate all your dental records in one place and keep them private and secure.

The diversity of the winning applications highlights Caffeine’s broad appeal. Projects like BlueLens, DentalTracks, and Will Maker demonstrate how the general public and entrepreneurs can build sophisticated, real-world solutions for specific needs without writing a single line of code. Road Patrol showcases the platform’s potential for enterprise and civic tech, enabling the creation of robust management tools. Meanwhile, K, the security scanner, is a prime example of how developers can leverage Caffeine to build specialized tools for their own workflows, moving beyond vibe coding to create complete, self-writing solutions.

The success of the non-technical participants was a powerful validation of Caffeine’s mission. But this event was more than just a showcase of technology. As Bruno Calabretta emphasized on the day, “We are making history today. The people who were part of the hackathon were the first people in the world who were able to use Caffeine and to leverage its potential.”

Caffeine Experience Pods

The excitement was not confined to the hackathon. At the back of the main stage, a dedicated space allowed attendees to test Caffeine for themselves.

These Experience Pods were an instant draw. As Pierre Samaties, Chief Business Officer, noted, “People were piling up at the experience pods to try out Caffeine.” Attendees rushed to the screens the moment they opened, building real tools on the spot, from managing invoicing workflows to tracking job applications, turning their ideas into reality in minutes.

The Next Hackathons

Those gathered at the event were the first to experience Caffeine, but this is just the beginning.

The DFINITY Foundation plans to take this experience on the road with a series of in-person hackathons in multiple cities. For those inspired to participate in the future, Bruno offers this advice:

> “Start thinking about something that you want to build, that you’ve been thinking about for a long time but you’ve never been able to implement. Go and look for that idea, that you know is going to be massive because now you can really build it.”

The message is clear: the Self-Writing Internet is here, and the next wave of creation is open to everyone.

Keynotes and Demos

Dominic Williams, Founder and Chief Scientist of the DFINITY Foundation, took the stage for a series of keynotes and live demos that moved from the theoretical to the tangible, describing the vision for the Self-Writing Internet and the groundbreaking technology that powers it.

A New Paradigm

In his first keynote, Dominic framed the current moment as one marked by a fundamental paradigm shift. He noted that “in the future, and really now with this technology, app development is a conversation.” He outlined the evolution of the internet, describing its development from craft coding to vibe coding, and now to self-writing. He described how in this new era, the ability to build applications through natural language democratizes creation for potentially 5 billion smartphone users worldwide. This shift, he explained, is enabled by a new, specialized tech stack built for AI, one which results in sovereign and tamperproof apps that are fully owned by their creators.

Data Persistence and Live Demos

In his next session, Dominic delved into one of the key technologies that makes this new era possible: enhanced orthogonal persistence. He explained that this tech, which allows data to live directly in the code without a traditional database, is the key to ensuring data is never lost during the rapid, conversational upgrade cycles of self-writing. To prove it, he built and deployed three applications live on stage: a blog, a user photo gallery, and a task manager. He then upgraded the task manager with new features, demonstrating how the app’s existing data was migrated safely and seamlessly.

From Conversation to Commerce

Before his final demos of the day, Dominic unveiled the upcoming Caffeine App Market, a new, open model for app distribution where users can “clone, not install” applications, allowing them to customize and build upon the work of others in the Caffeine ecosystem. This will enable Caffeine users to monetize their creations. To showcase the App Market, he cloned two existing applications, a task management app and a jewelry e-commerce store.

But there was more to Caffeine’s e-commerce potential. To demonstrate the platform’s power to build from the ground up, Dominic also created a golf store from scratch with a single prompt, which included a Stripe integration for payments.

As he concluded, “This system is designed to enable individuals and organizations to create production apps that are secure, resilient, and sovereign entirely through conversation.”

The Conversations

Beyond the live demos and hackathon creations, the day was also filled with insightful discussions with industry leaders, exploring the future of AI, investment, and the internet itself.

Interview: UTOPIA for Enterprise and Government

In an exclusive interview for the Hello, Self-Writing Internet livestream, Pierre Samaties, Chief Business Officer at the DFINITY Foundation, discussed the significance of UTOPIA for enterprise and government clients. He described UTOPIA as a private version of the Internet Computer, designed for organizations that require full control over their hardware for digital sovereignty.

This directly addresses a major trend of governments and enterprises seeking to build their own sovereign software, free from the data privacy concerns associated with traditional Big Tech.

“Caffeine will probably play an even bigger role on the enterprise and government market,” Pierre noted, explaining that the combination of Caffeine and UTOPIA provides a powerful tool for building and customizing fit-for-purpose software, bypassing lengthy and restrictive procurement processes.

Panel: From Seed to Singularity: Charting the Next Frontier in AI Investment

Speakers:

* Dr. Sue Xu, Managing Partner, Amino Capital
* Kumar Dandapani, Managing Partner, Cadenza
* Jing Xiong, AI Investment Director, YZi Labs
* Moderator: Jason Gao, DFINITY Foundation, Ecosystem & Strategic Partnerships

Three Key Takeaways:

* Investment is shifting from data-dependent AI to self-evolving AI: The panel noted a clear pivot in investment strategy away from AI that relies on human-labeled data and towards self-learning, agentic AI that can automate complex, domain-specific tasks.
* The evolution from “co-pilot” to “co-creator”: The consensus was that AI development tools are moving beyond simply assisting developers to becoming autonomous “co-creators.” This shift empowers a new wave of “solo unicorns” and will fundamentally change the startup landscape.
* Compute is the new capital: A recurring theme was that access to compute power is a critical bottleneck and a key investment thesis. Platforms like Caffeine that democratize or lower the cost of compute are seen as highly valuable and currently underrated.

Fireside Chat: AI Scaling as an Engine of Innovation and Growth

Panelists:

* William Stranzl, GTM, Anthropic
* Pierre Samaties, Chief Business Officer, DFINITY Foundation
* Moderator: Colm Woods, Managing Director, CW8 Communications

Three Key Takeaways:

* Enterprise AI is shifting from experimentation to implementation: Businesses are now actively using AI to unlock new revenue streams, driven by a desire to innovate and not get left behind. This is moving the conversation from simple chatbots to sophisticated agentic AI that can act as virtual collaborators.
* Sovereignty and customization are critical for adoption: For enterprise and government clients, the ability to build sovereign software on a controlled infrastructure like UTOPIA is a major driver. This allows for hyper-customized applications that fit specific business processes, rather than forcing processes to fit the software.
* A new, open app economy is emerging: The combination of powerful AI models and platforms like Caffeine is fundamentally changing how software is created and distributed, leading to a new trend of hyper-local, decentralized applications.

Fireside Chat: From Protocols to Possibilities: The Internet Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

* Speaker: Dominic Williams, Founder & Chief Scientist, DFINITY Foundation
* Moderator: Michael Casey, Chairman, Advanced AI Society

Three Key Takeaways:

* Self-writing is a new paradigm, not just better vibe coding: The discussion distinguished between vibe coding (an engineer using AI as a tool) and self-writing (where the entire app lifecycle is a conversation). This shift moves development from a technical task to a creative one, accessible to anyone.
* The future of the internet is fluid and democratized: The chat explored a future where creating an app is as common as a web search. This leads to a “fluid web,” where AI can generate user experiences on the fly by combining functionality from various apps, which act like microservices.
* A new paradigm requires a new, sovereign tech stack: The speakers emphasized that, like mobile before it, the self-writing era requires a purpose-built tech stack. The Internet Computer provides this, offering tamperproof, resilient, and sovereign apps that run without traditional cybersecurity overhead, a crucial safety guardrail for a world of AI-driven development.

Panel: Guardrails for Intelligence: Governance and Security in the Age of AI

Speakers:

* Jan Camenisch, CTO, DFINITY Foundation
* Alex Fowler, Chief Strategy Officer, Nexus
* Adnan Dakhwe, CISO, DelphinusCyber
* Moderator: Colm Woods, Managing Director, CW8 Communications

Three Key Takeaways:

* Security and privacy are often afterthoughts in the current AI boom: The panel highlighted a “crisis in leadership” where commercial pressures for speed and monetization frequently overshadow fundamental security and privacy concerns, leaving users to fend for themselves.
* Decentralized infrastructure offers a more secure foundation: The panel contrasted the “broken” traditional IT stack with secure-by-design protocols like the Internet Computer. Platforms like Caffeine can help users migrate to this more secure, sovereign environment where they have greater control over their data and applications.
* True AI governance requires end-to-end decentralization: To effectively govern powerful AI, control must be decentralized across the entire stack, from the training data and models to the execution environment. This removes single points of failure and is the only way to ensure long-term safety and alignment.

In the Future…

The Hello, Self-Writing Internet event was a landmark occasion. It brought together the tangible creativity of the hackathon winners, visionary keynotes, and insightful panel discussions to mark the arrival of a new paradigm.

The day showcased a future where the ability to create and deploy complete applications is no longer limited by technical skill, because as Dominic Williams explained, “in the future, natural language alone will unlock tech team superpowers.”

However, the results that emerged from the energy and creativity on display in San Francisco proved that the Self-Writing Internet is not really a distant concept. It is a reality today.

We would like to extend our thanks to all who attended in San Francisco and watched around the world, including the incredible hackathon participants and the insightful speakers who shared their expertise.

Keep Up to Date with Caffeine

You can find out about the latest developments related to Caffeine on X: https://x.com/caffeineai

Relive the Day

You can watch the full livestream of the event here:

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Experience Caffeine for Yourself

Be among the first to build apps just by talking. Apply for early access to Caffeine. Invite codes are now being released on a rolling basis.

Apply here: https://caffeine.ai

Hello, Self-Writing Internet: Creations and Conversations was originally published in The Internet Computer Review on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story. [The Internet Computer Review]