I’m excited to share The Incident Challenge with you.
The idea started from something we kept seeing: AI can write code now. A lot of code.
But the moment production breaks, the hard part usually isn’t writing the fix.
It’s understanding what actually happened. Where to look. What to ignore. Which weird detail matters.
That’s the (human) skill we wanted to turn into a sport. So we built The Incident Challenge: a production debugging game for engineers.
You get dropped into a realistic broken system. What you get:
Logs, code, configs, docs, architecture diagrams, misleading symptoms, and a ticking clock.
Your job: Find the root cause. Fix it. Deploy the solution. Beat the leaderboard.
And yes, you can use AI agents.
But the challenge is designed so AI alone usually isn’t enough.
It might help you move faster, but you still need real engineering instincts to win.
The idea pretty much exploded on reddit, and today we have more than 300 devs participating.
Some people solve the same incident in minutes. Others take much longer.
That gap is exactly what makes it fun.
The challenge is live now, so feel free to give it spin, and maybe you might win!
Would genuinely love your feedback, ideas for future incidents, and brutal honesty on whether this feels like something engineers would want to play.
Come debug with us 🤘
About The Incident Challenge on Product Hunt
“Production Debugging Games for Software Engineers”
The Incident Challenge launched on Product Hunt on May 25th, 2026 and earned 111 upvotes and 10 comments, placing #12 on the daily leaderboard. Compete in realistic incident simulations where you find the root cause, fix the system, and race the leaderboard.
On the analytics side, The Incident Challenge competes within Artificial Intelligence, Tech and Games — topics that collectively have 1.2M followers on Product Hunt. The dashboard above tracks how The Incident Challenge performed against the three products that launched closest to it on the same day.
Who hunted The Incident Challenge?
The Incident Challenge was hunted by Avi (Avihai) CT. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
For a complete overview of The Incident Challenge including community comment highlights and product details, visit the product overview.
Avi (Avihai) CT
Hey Product Hunt!
I’m excited to share The Incident Challenge with you.
The idea started from something we kept seeing: AI can write code now. A lot of code.
But the moment production breaks, the hard part usually isn’t writing the fix.
It’s understanding what actually happened. Where to look. What to ignore. Which weird detail matters.
That’s the (human) skill we wanted to turn into a sport. So we built The Incident Challenge: a production debugging game for engineers.
You get dropped into a realistic broken system. What you get:
Logs, code, configs, docs, architecture diagrams, misleading symptoms, and a ticking clock.
Your job: Find the root cause. Fix it. Deploy the solution. Beat the leaderboard.
And yes, you can use AI agents.
But the challenge is designed so AI alone usually isn’t enough.
It might help you move faster, but you still need real engineering instincts to win.
The idea pretty much exploded on reddit, and today we have more than 300 devs participating.
Some people solve the same incident in minutes. Others take much longer.
That gap is exactly what makes it fun.
The challenge is live now, so feel free to give it spin, and maybe you might win!
Would genuinely love your feedback, ideas for future incidents, and brutal honesty on whether this feels like something engineers would want to play.
Come debug with us 🤘