Cole Medin with a 90-second announcement (a sponsored spot for Amazon Developer) about the Build, Ship, Shape hackathon — and the part that matters past the prize money: Amazon has made MCP the way outside services plug into Alexa+.

What Amazon actually adopted

  • Alexa+ integrations run over MCP, the open standard — not a bespoke Amazon SDK you’d have to learn from scratch
  • Transport is Streamable HTTP on spec 2025-11-25 or later
  • An MCP server you already have works with minimal changes: you provide the tools, Alexa+ supplies the conversation, the screen and the voice

The hackathon, in short

  • Four tracks in one global event: Alexa+, Fire TV, Ring, and Bee (the wearable) — the first time all four are open to outside developers at once
  • $190K in value across cash and AWS credits (Devpost lists $138,000 of that as cash)
  • Alexa+ track: $25,000 cash + $15,000 AWS credits for first place, plus a 1:1 with the Amazon Developer team
  • Solo or team, no experience required — the pitch is that you build the thing you’d build anyway
  • Submissions close October 23, 2026, 7:00pm UTC (3pm ET)
  • Roughly 12,200 people had registered when this was captured

The Alexa+ track specifically

  • Bring a self-hosted MCP server or an Agent Skill and show it working
  • No Echo needed: you can simulate the Alexa+ side in a web app using your own agentic tools — the repo just has to include the simulation’s source code
  • The required tech has to be live in the code (an import, an entry point, a loaded MCP/agent config), not a mention in the README
  • Feedback you submit goes directly to the product teams building the platform

Extra ways to win (mini challenges)

  • AWS Builder: use Bedrock, AgentCore, Strands SDK, Kiro Crew or SageMaker with documented integrations
  • Open Source: ship an additional open-source project, or a branch/fork/PR against a public repo during the window — it does not need to be merged

What they’re judging

  • Tech implementation (how well it uses the required APIs/SDKs), design (a coherent, intuitive product experience), potential impact (a credible case for real customer needs), and quality of the idea

“You don’t have to learn anything new. You just build the MCP server you’d create anyway. It’s just that it runs in something that lives in people’s kitchens.” — Cole Medin

Entering

  • Registration, rules and track details: amazonappdev2026.devpost.com — the link in the video description is a tracked affiliate URL that resolves to this same page
  • Submission repo: public with an open-source license, or private and shared with testing@devpost.com plus the Amazon DevRel GitHub accounts
  • One thing to watch if you go the private-repo route: GitHub collaborator invites expire after 7 days, so add the reviewers at submission time rather than weeks ahead