index

On November 22, 2025, I joined a Trae hackathon in Suzhou and built a project called “Blink or Die – Dry Eye Saver”. It’s a Chrome extension that literally forces you to blink to protect your eyes: if you don’t blink, you don’t get to see the screen clearly.

The idea is simple but a bit evil in a fun way: “If you don’t blink, you don’t get to see.”

The extension uses AI face detection to track whether I’m blinking. If I keep my eyes open for more than about eight seconds, it starts to “punish” me visually: the screen slowly turns blurry and slightly red, simulating dry eyes. The moment I blink again, everything goes back to normal. It’s a playful way to deal with a real problem for people who stare at screens all day.

In the morning, the ByteDance Trae team gave a talk about their new Solo Mode and shared some ideas around vibe coding and AI-assisted development. A lot of people also did self-introductions, and the room was full of really strong developers and creators. I finally got to meet Samuel, whom I’ve been following for about two years, and we even took a photo together, which was a small personal highlight for me.

From 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., my teammate Roucher and I coded non-stop using Trae’s new Solo Mode and a vibe coding workflow. We basically built the whole project during that time window. It felt like pair programming, but with AI deeply integrated into the process, which made the whole experience very different from a traditional hackathon.

In the end, we did a short demo on stage. Blink or Die ended up winning an Excellence Award (4th place), and I was honestly really happy about that result. I also got a themed T-shirt as a prize. The overall tech atmosphere at the event was super strong: people were genuinely excited about AI programming and vibe coding, and there were also many non-technical participants who just wanted to explore what AI can do.

It was a very intense but satisfying day, and it made me even more excited about building tools around AI and developer experience.