# Build AI Agents You Can Actually Trust — Hackathon in Mountain View 🚀

> Join us March 27 for a hands-on What The Hack event where you'll build, instrument, and secure AI agents using Microsoft Agent Framework, OpenTelemetry, and New Relic on Azure.

*Published March 11, 2026* · Categories: newrelic

Source: https://www.kimpel.com/2026/03/11/microsoft-wth-newrelic-azure-mtv/


## You Founded a Startup. Your AI Agents Are Hallucinating. Your Investors Are Watching

Sound fun? It is, actually.

On **March 27**, we're hosting a free, in-person hackathon at the **Microsoft Mountain View Campus** (1045 La Avenida St, Mountain View, CA) where you'll build an AI-powered travel planning assistant from scratch — and then make it production-ready with real observability and security controls.

This is part of [Microsoft's What The Hack](https://aka.ms/wth) series: collaborative, challenge-based hackathons where you learn by *doing*, not by watching someone else's screen.

## 🌍 The Scenario: Welcome to WanderAI

You've just founded **WanderAI**, a travel planning startup. Your customers describe their dream trip, and your AI agents craft personalized itineraries.

But here's the catch — your investors want answers:

- 🔍 Are the agents making *good* recommendations?
- ⚡ How fast are they responding?
- 🚨 When something breaks, can we debug it?
- ✅ Are the travel plans actually... good?

Your mission: go from "cool demo" to "production-ready AI service" in a single day.

## 🛠️ What You'll Build (and Learn)

The hack is structured as 8 progressive challenges:

| # | Challenge | What You'll Do |
|---|-----------|----------------|
| 00 | **Prerequisites** | Set up your GitHub Codespace |
| 01 | **Master the Foundations** | Understand agent architecture, tools & orchestration |
| 02 | **Build Your MVP** | Create a Flask web app + your first AI agent with tool calling |
| 03 | **Add OpenTelemetry** | Instrument with built-in telemetry, verify traces in console & New Relic |
| 04 | **New Relic Integration** | Custom spans, metrics, and correlated logging |
| 05 | **Monitoring Best Practices** | Dashboards, alerting, and production monitoring patterns |
| 06 | **LLM Quality Gates** | Build evaluation tests and CI/CD quality gates for AI outputs |
| 07 | **Platform Security** | Configure Microsoft Foundry Guardrails |
| 08 | **App-Level Security** | Prompt injection detection and blocking |

By the end, you'll have a fully instrumented, observable, and secure multi-agent AI system. Not bad for one day.

## 🧰 The Tech Stack

- **Microsoft Agent Framework** — for building multi-agent orchestrations
- **OpenTelemetry** — the open standard for traces, metrics, and logs
- **New Relic** — for sending, visualizing, and alerting on all that telemetry
- **Azure** — the cloud backbone
- **Python + Flask** — the app layer
- **GitHub Codespaces** — zero local setup headaches

## 🍕 The Details

- **When:** March 27, 2026
- **Where:** Microsoft Mountain View Campus, 1045 La Avenida St, Mountain View, CA
- **Cost:** Free
- **Food:** Provided
- **Duration:** ~3–5 hours
- **What to bring:** Your laptop and curiosity

## Who Is This For?

Anyone who's building (or thinking about building) AI agents and wants to understand what's happening under the hood. Whether you're a backend engineer, an ML practitioner, a platform engineer, or just AI-curious — this hack meets you where you are.

No prior experience with New Relic or OpenTelemetry is required. Basic Python and web dev knowledge is helpful.

## 🎟️ Register Now

Space is limited — grab your seat before it fills up:

👉 **[Register here](https://aka.ms/AzNewRelicWTH)**

See you in Mountain View! 🏔️