Chan and Chance, Eve and Roxy, and Braydon and Devyn on the set of Web Dev Challenge. the text reads, "Web Dev Challenge community hackathon, S2.E3 Worst Video Player by Mux and CodeTV"

Photos: Jason Hill

Build the most unhinged, Byzantine, devious, unusual video player UX you can imagine.

Programmer social media passes around intentionally bad UI designs every once in a while, and it’s both very fun and also deeply painful to see how creatively a developer can make something like a simple button hurt so much to use.

Your challenge is to embody this kind of mischievous energy and build out a truly heinous video player UX built on top of the Mux video player base. The video must be actually playable (though we’ll let you get creative with what “playable” means).

Apps must use Mux as part of the build.

Introduction to Mux

In the kickoff call for this hackathon, Dave Kiss from Mux gives an overview of how Mux and Media Chrome works.

Kickoff call with Dave Kiss from Mux, recorded May 20

Big prizes for this hackathon!

We always have goodies for the hackathon, but Mux is stepping it up this time:

  • Winning submission gets a trip to Vercel Ship — fly to New York City and attend the conference. Mux covers your ticket, flight, and hotel.
  • Runner up gets an Elgato streaming bundle — Prompter, 2x Key Light MK.2, Stream Deck, and Wave:3 mic.
  • First 50 entrants get a Media Chrome Thrift-tee — Retro vibes guaranteed to help you learn to write COBOL
  • First 100 entrants get $100 Mux credit — Get Mux bucks, on us.

Get more details on the Mux site

Make new connections and get expert guidance

We’ve set up a dedicated channel in the CodeTV Discord called #builder-chat for brainstorming, sharing ideas, and keeping each other accountable.

Find an accountabilibuddy, get expert guidance from the industry professionals, run your idea past Jason and other community members, and listen in to what the rest of the community is cooking up in this open call to kick off the hackathon.

RSVP to add it to your calendar:

Watch the episode for inspiration

See how Chan and Chance, Eve and Roxy, and Braydon and Devyn tackled the challenge in the latest episode of Web Dev Challenge to jumpstart your own creativity.

The rules and how to submit

If you want to play along, here’s how:

  1. Team up with a friend or work on your onw
  2. Build a web app that meets the challenge
  3. Spend 30 minutes¹ planning your app
  4. Spend 4 hours¹ building your app
  5. Use Mux to build your web app
  6. Publish the source code as a public GitHub repo
  7. Publish the web app to a public URL
  8. Submit your web app by 11:59 pm Pacific on Monday, June 15, 2025

Submit your web app

Happy building! Let’s have some fun.