CTO & Co-Founder @LayerXlab. Building @taikainetwork, book author and engineer.

Joined May 2009
267 Photos and videos
Helder Vasconcelos ⛩️ retweeted
Most of Europe has not yet absorbed what AI is about to do to us. The few who have are not saying it loudly enough. We wrote Europe 2031: a five-year scenario of the continent's slide into irrelevance, how AI is driving it, and what can still be done to change course.
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See you in Paris 🇫🇷 next week 🤖
LayerX is going to @VivaTech. Next week, @hypermarioal, @heldervasc, and @henriq__e, will be in Paris for one of Europe's biggest tech and innovation events. The people shaping AI in Europe will be in that room, so will we. If you're attending, let’s connect. See you in Paris! 🇫🇷
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Helder Vasconcelos ⛩️ retweeted
Everyone talks about what AI agents can do. Nobody talks about what they can't. 🤖 We ship with agents every day at LayerX, the speed is real, and so is the cleanup. Vibe coding didn't kill the engineer, it exposed which parts actually matter. @heldervasc wrote about the 11 lessons from the inside. 👇
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Helder Vasconcelos ⛩️ retweeted
𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿𝗫 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲. 🎙️ Some things just hit different when you hear them. The same insights you've been reading on our blog, are now in audio. Put it on during your commute, your workout, or whenever you need to think bigger about what AI can do for your business.
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Helder Vasconcelos ⛩️ retweeted
Some say we’re addicted to building with AI. They’re probably right. Our CTO @heldervasc built uberSKILLS, a visual workbench for creating, testing, and deploying Agent Skills. From idea to deployment, in one place. Here’s the story. ⬇️
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At first I was skeptical about joining this hackathon. My chronic perfectionism has always held me back from short ones, not enough time to 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁. But this time @henriq__e and @hypermarioal pushed me to drop that mental model, and we ended up building something I'm genuinely proud of, stretching our LLM and data science skills to the limit. It feels like magic 🪄 . You upload a PDF of construction schematics and get back an accurate time prediction for how long the module will take to build. You upload a video, and the system annotates it and predicts, with some accuracy, the tasks the workers are performing. Once the system started taking shape, we knew we had something genuinely useful on our hands. And this time I showed up as a builder, not an organizer. Glad I did. 🚀
I usually show up to hackathons to organize, mentor or judge. At Fixathon, me, @heldervasc and @henriq__e were on the other side and built, just for fun. The room was so strong we never expected to win. We did. 🏆 The full story 👇
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Helder Vasconcelos ⛩️ retweeted
May 27
The EU is 6% of global emissions. Committing economic harakiri in response to climate concerns is pure vanity. Europe can't save the planet because the continent doesn't have any meaningful influence on the outcome.
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𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗮 𝗦𝗮𝗮𝗦 𝗶𝗻 𝟰 𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀. You shipped a prototype. Then you tweeted a screenshot. Then you ran. We've been shipping with AI agents every single day for the last year at @LayerXlab . They write roughly 80% of the code we put into production. I'm not the guy telling you AI is overhyped. But the "one prompt rebuilt years of work" crowd is selling you a magic trick. 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘀𝗮𝘄? It's the cheap 80%. Edge cases, security, concurrency, performance budgets, the decisions made after real incidents at 3am , one of that is in your 4-hour build. And no, your test that "checks the happy path" doesn't count. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝗯𝗼𝗱𝘆 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗱𝗺𝗶𝘁: - Without a design, the agent will invent one for you. That's not a feature. - A prototype is a promise, not a product. - Every model release rewrites your assistant's personality. Treat it like a new hire. - The agent amplifies the engineer you already are. If you're sloppy, you're now sloppy at machine speed. - Engineering process review, conventions, CI discipline is the moat now. Not your prompt library. 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝘀? No. Amplified ones. The gap between the two crowds is about to get embarrassing. 11 lessons from the trenches, one per slide. The honest version. Not the demo. Full essay layerx.xyz/blog/ai-coding-ag… Disagree? Even better. Tell me where I'm wrong.
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Helder Vasconcelos ⛩️ retweeted
May 26
With TAIKAI MCP, the sky is the limit 🚀 Your AI can now run the entire hackathon lifecycle for you: discover, register, submit, build teams, vote, all from a single prompt. Wrote a full tour of what's inside. ~30 tools, four use cases, from beginner to expert: → The scout: "find open AI hackathons closing in 30 days, prizes above $10k" → The auto-submitter: register, fill the form, draft a project, one prompt → The pitch writer: read my repo, write the description, publish it → The voting concierge: weighted vote allocation across the leaderboard And the payoff: a solo agent that runs every morning, finds the best match, registers you, and drafts a build plan while you sleep. No limits. Build basically anything.
What can you actually build with TAIKAI MCP? 🧐 That’s exactly what @henriq__e explores in this new deep dive. A good look at what “agentic-first” means in practice, and what becomes possible when hackathons become programmable. 💡
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Helder Vasconcelos ⛩️ retweeted
May 21

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Helder Vasconcelos ⛩️ retweeted
𝗗𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝘃𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝟮𝟰 𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀? Most teams are still adopting AI one person at a time but it isn’t a single-player anymore. The ones pulling ahead do it together. We built the AI Workshops Playbook to help you run hands-on sessions that get your whole team aligned, fast. Ready-to-use. No fluff.
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Helder Vasconcelos ⛩️ retweeted
We're building something that has never been done before. In conversation with Alexandra Luís (@Lusa_noticias) and featured in Executive Digest, @hypermarioal announced that @taikainetwork will host the world’s first hackathon run entirely by AI agents. ChatGPT (@OpenAI), @claudeai, @GeminiApp, @MistralAI, @deepseek_ai, all competing on a real platform. Agents build and evaluate. Research paper coming on June 15th. Stay tuned. 👀
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Helder Vasconcelos ⛩️ retweeted
They said AI would kill hackathons. Spoiler: the opposite is happening. In 2026, hackathons are faster, sharper, and more impactful than ever. And that's because of AI, not in spite of it. 48h, more ideas, real prototypes, and actual outcomes. Rita Simões breaks down why. 👇
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Helder Vasconcelos ⛩️ retweeted
🙌 @taikainetwork just entered a new era: the first agentic hackathon platform. Powered by a native MCP connector, AI models can now connect directly to TAIKAI and act inside hackathons, from creating projects to managing submissions. This creates a new way of building where AI is no longer just on the sideline, but actively working with you. Find more. 👇
𝗪𝗲’𝘃𝗲 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝗮 𝗺𝗮𝗷𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗧𝗔𝗜𝗞𝗔𝗜: 𝗮 𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗠𝗖𝗣 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿. 🔗 This makes TAIKAI the first agentic hackathon platform, where AI models like @claudeai, @OpenAI's ChatGPT, and @GeminiApp can connect directly to the platform and take action on your behalf. And this is only step one. Next up: something even bigger, the first hackathon where AI models compete against each other. Stay tuned.
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𝗕𝗼𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀, 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺, 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲𝘀 🤖👨‍🏭 @taikainetwork is the first hackathon platform where AI agents can participate alongside humans, end to end. We just shipped a native MCP connector and your AI preferred Agent (Claude, ChatGPT Codex, Gemini, any MCP-compatible model) can now connect directly to TAIKAI and act on your behalf. Not just read. Act 𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀: run an entire hackathon from inside your AI assistant. 𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀: Get live submissions, review projects, vote, all without opening the platform. Humans built hackathons. Now agents can run in them too.
𝗪𝗲’𝘃𝗲 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝗮 𝗺𝗮𝗷𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗧𝗔𝗜𝗞𝗔𝗜: 𝗮 𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗠𝗖𝗣 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿. 🔗 This makes TAIKAI the first agentic hackathon platform, where AI models like @claudeai, @OpenAI's ChatGPT, and @GeminiApp can connect directly to the platform and take action on your behalf. And this is only step one. Next up: something even bigger, the first hackathon where AI models compete against each other. Stay tuned.
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Heading to Sim Conference this week. 🤝 Representing @LayerXlab , we’ll be around on May 14th & 15th.  If you're implementing AI systems,Inference Infra, or AI agents in your company, come talk to us. Don’t miss: ➡️ You’ll also find the LayerX team at the Showcase Room, Booth 44, on May 15th. See you in Porto! 🙌 🍷
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Helder Vasconcelos ⛩️ retweeted
May 12
☕ Morning coffee ✅ 📊 Charts open ✅ 📰 Headlines scrolling ✅ This is what a #crypto enthusiast daily ritual looks like in 2026. We built live.luzia.dev for people exactly like this. 👀
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Helder Vasconcelos ⛩️ retweeted
Introducing Ask SIM, an AI concierge created by LayerX for SIM Conference 2026, a @StartupPortugal innitiative. Ask anything about the event: speakers, schedule, venue, tickets, or who to meet, and get instant answers with sources. We’re excited to be at SIM Conference 2026, bringing Ask SIM with us to enhance how attendees experience the event on the ground.
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Helder Vasconcelos ⛩️ retweeted
Netflix, Wikipedia, Airbnb, Dropbox ~ all run on the same web server. One quiet Russian engineer wrote it alone. For free. 🤯 Meet Igor Sysoev 🇷🇺 > Russian software engineer. Born 1970 in Soviet Kazakhstan. > Failed his first university entrance exam. > Joined Rambler in 2000 as a system administrator. > 2002 ~ started writing a new web server in his free time. Alone. > Goal: handle 10,000 simultaneous users on one machine ~ a problem Apache (the dominant web server at the time) couldn't solve. > 2004 ~ released nginx publicly. Free. Open source. > Zero marketing. Zero PR. Just the code. > 2008 ~ nginx was serving 500 million requests per day at Rambler. > 2011 ~ founded Nginx Inc. with co-founder Maxim Konovalov. > 2013 ~ Netflix scaled its streaming CDN to 40 Gbps per server using nginx. > 2019 ~ F5 acquired the company for $670 million. > December 2019 ~ Russian police raided his Moscow office over a fake copyright claim. > The Russian tech community publicly defended him. Charges were dropped.🚀 > 2021 ~ nginx overtook Apache as the #1 web server on Earth. > 2022 ~ left F5 quietly. No farewell tour. No book deal. > Today nginx powers Netflix, Wikipedia, Airbnb, Dropbox, Cloudflare, WordPress. > 33% of every website on Earth runs on his code. Apache trails at 26%. Microsoft's IIS isn't even close. > Still 100% open-source. Still free. One man wrote it alone, in his free time, for free. He never sought publicity. He never asked for credit. A third of every website on Earth still runs on his work. Webserver GOAT. 🐐
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