Weird API Challenge

A developer challenge that makes no sense — until you realize how much you’re learning.

Build an API that nobody asked for.
Learn something new.
Make your fellow devs laugh.
That’s it. That’s the challenge.

What is this?

The Weird API Challenge is a community challenge for developers who want to flex their creativity, experiment with odd technologies, and make each other laugh. All of that will be achieved through building APIs that are technically useless — but creatively brilliant.

You need to build a small API that is either:

• Pointless but hilarious
• Wildly over-engineered
• Running on some obscure or cursed tech

To keep things educational and demo-friendly, your Weird API must:

• Be containerized (Docker)
• Expose at least one HTTP endpoint
• Be deployed to some cloud (at least for the time of presentation)
• Include a README.md that explains what it does (or tries to do), and how to run it locally
• Take no more than 4–6 hours to build
• Presentation time (in Backenders meetup): 10 minutes per participant

The hardest part is coming up with your idea. The rest is just coding and laughing.

An example of a weird API for reference: face-swap-api

Want to join?

• Create a GitHub repository
• Add a topic weird-api-challenge — here's the doc
• Start coding weird things!

A few tips

• If you haven’t tried it yet — download Cursor or Windsurf and try to build it with the help of AI. That's the future of software engineering.
• You don't have to ship your API to the biggest and best-known cloud providers like AWS, Azure, or GCP. For small projects there's a ton of good smaller clouds like railway or fly.io. Cloudflare + containers might also be worth exploring.
• Focus on integrating with existing APIs, libraries, or frameworks. The task is not about building everything from scratch.

If you have any questions — feel free to contact me. I can do the brainstorm with you.

The best way to learn is by building.
The best way to have fun is by building something ridiculous.
With Weird API Challenge, you get both.

So — what’s your weird idea?

Published with 💚 using PushBlog