Chicago in Context: MCP Mini-Hack by AI Tinkerers, LiquidMetal AI, and Drive Capital

Join us on Saturday November 1st from 12–5:30 PM at Drive Capital for the Chicago in Context: MCP Mini-Hack, hosted by AI Tinkerers, LiquidMetal AI, and Drive Capital

In 2010, Chicago became the first major US city to open source its municipal data, laying the groundwork for a new era of civic innovation

Now, that same spirit is fueling the next wave of experimentation.

At the Chicago in Context: MCP Mini-Hack, builders will team up to prototype agents that make sense of Chicago’s open source data and act on it.

Using LiquidMetal’s Raindrop platform(https://liquidmetal.ai), teams will bring Chicago to life through autonomous systems that tap into open datasets like crime, transit, energy, permits, weather, and 311 reports to power smarter real-time decisions. Imagine agents that summarize city metrics, predict congestion, route service requests, and help local businesses adapt to neighborhood trends in real time.

This is a hands-on, build-first hackathon for anyone excited about the intersection of AI, urban systems, and open data. Come prototype the next generation of context-aware agents right here in Chicago.

When and Where

Date: November 1, 2025, 12:00PM – 7:30 PM

Location: Chicago, IL (location details provided to accepted attendees; public disclosure is not provided)

What is Raindrop?

LiquidMetal AI is building Raindrop, the first AI-native framework designed for AI coding assistants to build production-grade backend systems.

Through the Raindrop MCP (Model Context Protocol), AI coding assistants like Claude Code and Cursor learn the entire development playbook—from architecture and PRD generation, through test-driven development cycles, to deployment and validation.

The framework provides declarative infrastructure, AI-native primitives (SmartMemory, SmartBuckets, SmartSQL), and complete versioning so AI assistants can ship working applications with persistent memory, multimodal storage, and natural language database access—all while following best practices and maintaining full observability.

Raindrop turns AI coding assistants into production-ready development partners that build real systems, not just prototypes.

Prizes

1st, 2nd and 3rd place for each category

Wildcard:
#1 WWE belt + 5k in Raindrop credits
#2 2k in raindrop credits
#3 500 in raindrop credits

Category #1 - City Systems: Infrastructure, energy, transit, and permits. Teams can build agents that forecast traffic or power usage in real time, create a smart permit copilot that automates zoning or construction workflows, or develop dynamic route optimizers for Chicago’s bus and train network—bringing intelligence and automation to the city’s core systems.

#1: 2k in raindrop credits
#1: 1k in raindrop credits
#3 500 in raindrop credits

Category #2 - Civic Pulse: Safety, 311, and community well-being. Teams can design agents that analyze 311 requests and automatically dispatch resources, generate predictive safety insights using public crime data, or build neighborhood dashboards that visualize livability and responsiveness across the city.

#1: 2k in raindrop credits
#1: 1k in raindrop credits
#3 500 in raindrop credits

Schedule

• 12pm - 1pm: Lunch, open networking and team selection
• 1pm - 145pm: Intro from LiquidMetal and Landon Campbell
• 1:45pm - 4:45pm: Hacking
• 5pm: Presentations

Demo Policy

Demos are five minutes long and must showcase a working build. Pitch decks are forbidden.

Participation Requirements

Registration requires an email and at least one online profile (LinkedIn, Twitter/X, or GitHub). Hackers must use Claude Code to access Raindrop

Demo Submissions

A demonstration should show a work in progress with a tangible outcome. Submissions must be five minutes in length.

📊 AI Tinkerers Chicago Stats

• Attendees: This exclusive community of 2,189 subscribers comprises 52% AI/ML specialists and 68% full-stack engineers, with 32% holding founder or executive titles. Members represent elite institutions like UChicago, UIUC, and Google. Notable achievements include deploying production-grade agentic workflows, building open-source developer platforms, and engineering FDA-cleared medical AI, making this Chicago’s premier hub for high-signal technical collaboration.
• Companies Represented: Featuring tech giants and AI leaders like Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Waymo, alongside fast-growing platforms such as DoorDash, Robinhood, TikTok, and Pinecone, and emerging startups like ElevenLabs, HumanLayer, Autonoma AI, and pieces.app, and more
• Demos: 184 demos have been submitted and 107 have been presented. The most exciting themes have centered on agentic workflows, retrieval and knowledge-centric systems, and production-grade reliability via evals, observability, and guardrails. Technical exploration has also highlighted structured generation (function calling and schemas), efficiency/cost optimization for LLM pipelines, and practical multimodal/document processing.
• Testimonials:

  “Please continue organizing interactive AI events with industry professionals and real-world discussions about technology trends, career opportunities, and practical AI applications. ... Events like this are very helpful for students and professionals looking to grow their technical skills and better understand the future of AI and technology.”

  — QA engineer, cloud support

  “For the people that don't get to present, what if their work could be featured in some way that allows others to see a demo online or read a deck describing the work (or both)... This is such a great idea. I signed up right away. ... Your network puts you in a unique position to really make this idea scale...”

  — Founder, crypto AI

  “Such a cool concept”

  — Devrel @ web3 foundation

  “Leaders from successful startups as speakers is great. Love hearing from my tinkerers but it was clear alpha in building a business and companies actually hiring created a different vibe.”

  — Founder, GTM strategy

  “Keep up the good work. This group is a really great way to stay connected to what's happening with AI in Chicago.”

  — Founder, crypto AI

  “Please keep organizing highly technical, builder-focused AI events like this in Chicago.”

  — R&D engineer, defense tech

  “I enjoyed the breakout room like discussions from the previous Meetup hosted by Zapier. Those allowed us to easily connect and talk about experiences.”

  — Applied AI engineer