cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Databricks Community Contest | Genie-Powered App Challenge

genie_app_challenge_master_1200x1200_edited.png
Published on ‎08-17-2026 07:42 AM by Databricks Employee | Updated on ‎08-17-2026 10:24 AM

What's the challenge

Build a Databricks App on Free Edition with a Genie Agent at its core.

Build a Databricks App, create and configure your own Genie Agent, connect it to your App, and use it to power a meaningful, useful, or unexpected experience. The problem, audience, data, interface, and solution are up to you.

Key dates

Two weeks to build.

Launch
Aug 17
Submissions close
Aug 31
Winners announced
Sep 10
The theme

Genie at the Core.

Genie at the Core means the Genie Agent should be central, meaningful, and effective in your application. Your app should use Genie to power its main experience or outcome. For example, people might ask questions about data in natural language and receive answers, insights, or results through the app.

The gut check

If Genie were removed, would the main experience or outcome of your app change significantly?

If the answer is yes, you are thinking in the right direction.

Choose your track

Two ways in. Pick one.

Track A

Real-World Problem Solver

Build an app that solves a practical problem for a real audience, an internal data app that helps people explore business information, spot operational trends, or answer the questions they ask again and again.

The focus is usefulness - show how Genie moves a user from a question to a data-backed answer inside the app.

Track B

Creative Thinking

Use Genie in an imaginative or unexpected way. The idea can be unconventional, playful, or exploratory, as long as Genie plays a meaningful role and the app shows what it can do with real data.

The focus is originality - surprise us with the experience and the questions your app lets people ask.

How to participate

Five steps to enter.

1

Build a Databricks App with a Genie Agent at its core, in Free Edition.

2

Choose your track - Real-World Problem Solver or Creative Thinking.

3

Share your project story in Community Articles. For exactly what to include, see the Project story checklist below.

4

Create a demo of your app - a short video or walkthrough that shows Project in action.

5

Submit your entry through the challenge registration form.

Project story

Help the community learn from your build.

A clear explanation of your Project setup will help other builders. Make these clear in your write-up:

 What problem, opportunity, or creative idea does your app address?

 Who is it designed for?

 Describe your application architecture and data flow.

 What can users ask the Genie Agent?

 How does Genie power the app’s main experience?

 What did you learn while building and testing the app?

How it is judged

Scored out of 40 points.

Justice to the theme - Genie at the Core
20 pts

How central, meaningful, and effective is the Genie Agent? Does it power the main experience?

Track execution
10 pts

Track A: how effectively does the app solve a real-world problem?
Track B: how creative and distinctive is the idea and its use of Genie?

App experience
10 pts

How intuitive, polished, and effective is the overall app experience?

Total 40 points
Recognition

More than a badge.

🏆 Winners
Top 4

The top four entries will be recognized as challenge winners and will get swags.

🎤 Spotlight
Top 2

The top two entries will be selected as Bricktalk speakers.

All participants will be awarded a Contributor badge in recognition of their entry.

Getting started

New to Genie or Apps? Start here.

Free, self-paced courses and the exact docs you will need to get building.

Submit your entry  →

Choose your track. Put Genie at the core. 🚀

Show us what you can create. Drop a 💬 in the comments with what you are thinking of building, and like the entries you love.



Event has ended
You can no longer attend this event.

Start:
Mon, Aug 17, 2026 09:00 AM PDT
End:
Mon, Aug 31, 2026 11:30 PM PDT
24 Comments

I faced a very similar issue — the app deployment showed RUNNING / SUCCEEDED, but the app URL was still not accessible.

I would first check the App permissions/access. Go to the app → Share/Permissions and make sure your user has CAN USE (or CAN MANAGE) access.

Also check the permissions of the app’s service principal on any resources the app is using, such as Genie Space, SQL Warehouse, tables/catalog/schema, etc. A successful deployment does not necessarily mean the app has all the required runtime access.

In our case, checking the access/authorization configuration was an important part of troubleshooting this.

ravikr1
Databricks Partner

Hi Admins,

My article A Conversational Trade Promotion Optimization App with Genie at the Core ( https://community.databricks.com/t5/community-articles/a-conversational-trade-promotion-optimization... )  was caught by the automated spam filter, can you guys look into it and review and approve it, as i have filled my submission using this article link only.
Thanks,

Ravi 

Advika
Community Manager
Community Manager

Done! Its now live on the Community.

sudiptob-DA
New Contributor II
# CosmosGenie — Your Universe, Answered

**Databricks Community Genie-Powered App Challenge · Track B, Creative Thinking**
 
## Take Genie away and what's left?

Four figures and a timeline. No hidden dashboard, no filter panel, no report waiting in a drawer. Every ranking, every caveat, every kid-friendly explanation is generated live from a question no one wrote down in advance — including, at last, the one that started this.

## Built on Free Edition

All of it on Databricks Free Edition: Unity Catalog, a serverless SQL warehouse, a Lakeflow SDP pipeline and Lakeflow Jobs, a Genie Agent, and Databricks Apps with the agent attached as a resource. Data from NASA (NeoWs, DONKI, the Five Millennium eclipse catalog), USNO, JPL, The Space Devs and the Spaceflight News API — all free, most needing no key. Fully reproducible from the notebooks.


## Where it started

This project has a specific origin: a bedtime question from my son. "Is an asteroid going to hit us?" I said I'd find out, opened my laptop, and realised the honest process was going to be three browser tabs, a NASA API key, and a spreadsheet of numbers in astronomical units. None of that was going to land with a seven-year-old, and frankly it was more friction than I wanted either.

The strange thing is that the answer was completely available. NASA tracks every near-Earth asteroid and refreshes it daily, for free. The US Naval Observatory publishes moon phases. JPL computes the planets. It is all open. It is just packaged for people who already speak the language — JSON payloads, flux classes, orbital elements — and a curious kid is the exact person that packaging shuts out.
srimonishan
New Contributor II

srimonishan_0-1788410519741.png

i already sudmitted my challege but still i unable to submit my Article so i out a article in medium 
medium url 
Github Repo 

monishan