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Relate by Neo4j is a new open-source embedded database built for AI agents, launching at NODES 2026. To mark the launch, we’re opening the Relate by Neo4j Hackathon, a month-long online event. The hackathon opens on November 11 at 6 PM Pacific Time, on Devpost. You’ll be among the first people to build with Relate, learn from builders around the world, and help shape what the community makes with it.
The theme is Context, Connected: agents that understand how your data connects. Your data is only as useful as the connections you can see in it, so build something that gives agents, apps, or people the relationships that matter. Show us how connected context makes an agent more reliable, because it can finally see how things relate instead of guessing. Hack solo, bring friends or colleagues, or find teammates in the Neo4j Community and on Discord. Every experience level is welcome.
What is Relate? #
Relate is a new, open-source embedded database for AI agents and the engineers who build them. It runs as a library inside your application, with no signup and no server to deploy, so getting set up is as frictionless as it gets.
Relate is agent-native: it was built with agents in mind from the start. The graph can live in memory, in a directory, or in a single file, and because it runs inside your application, following a relationship or running a vector search is a fast local lookup instead of a network call or a table join. It is easy to use it from the command line, as a library in Rust or Python, or in a browser tab with WebAssembly.
Relate is agent-native. It was designed around how agents actually work, so they spend their turns on your problem instead of fighting their tools.
- Lightweight graph storage: Create a single-file graph for a session, sandbox, or user, configure memory limits, and remove it when the task is done.
- Structured results: Queries return JSON with capped row counts, and error messages explain how to correct a problem.
- Shared graph updates: Transactions let multiple agents update the same graph without overwriting each other’s changes.
- Coding-agent setup: Install a Relate skill into the coding agents you already use, helping them discover and work with Relate.
What can you build? #
Build an agent, app, or tool that uses connected data to solve a concrete problem. For example:
- Trace a bug: Connect tests, functions, modules, issues, and recent changes so a coding agent can follow a failing test to a likely cause.
- Coordinate agent work: Represent tasks, owners, dependencies, and status in a shared graph so agents can divide work and respond to updates.
- Explore a knowledge base: Connect documents, people, and events so an agent can find relevant sources and show how they relate.
These are starting points. Build a new project or add new work to an existing one.
Get started #
Try Relate with your coding agent. Ask it to follow the setup instructions and use Relate to store connected facts for your project:
Install Relate by Neo4j by following the instructions at relatedb.ai.
Use Relate as this project's memory:
store what you learn as connected facts, and query them with Cypher.Code language: PHP (php)
From the terminal: Install the CLI and run a query locally:
curl -sSfL https://relatedb.ai/install.sh | bash
relate --mode table "RETURN 1 AS ok"
The install guide and quickstart are located at relatedb.ai.
Prizes, dates, and how to enter #
Three winning entries will take home serious hardware, worth over $6000 USD, and all winners will be featured on the Neo4j blog.
| Place | Prize |
|---|---|
| First | Mac Studio (M5 Max, 64GB / 1TB) |
| Second | Mac mini (M6, 32GB / 512GB) |
| Third | Mac mini (M6, 16GB / 256GB) |
Public voting runs alongside judging, separate from the judges’ scores, and powers a community favorite award.
| Date | |
|---|---|
| Wednesday, November 11 | Hacking begins, 6PM Pacific |
| Friday, December 11 | Submissions close, 6PM Pacific |
| Wednesday, December 16 | Judging closes, 6PM Pacific |
| Thursday, December 17 | Winners announced |
Submit on Devpost with a project description that explains your use case, a link to your public GitHub repo with a README that shows others how to set it up, and a 1-2 minute demo video (a screen share is fine). Include working code, or the prompts you used with Relate. Building on an existing project is fine, as long as the work you submit for judging is new. Entries are scored equally on creativity, usefulness, completeness, clarity, effective use of connected context, and how fully you leveraged AI and agentic capabilities.
Ready to show your agent Relate? Install Relate, grab the GitHub repo, join the Neo4j Community or Discord to find a team, and show us what agents can do when context is connected. Full rules and registration are on Devpost.