The CUBE 2026 kickoff runs from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM IST on Friday 18 September 2026. It is planned as an in-person session in Hyderabad with online / hybrid access. Venue details are subject to confirmation and will be shared with selected participants closer to the date.

Theme: From AI Ideas to Industry-Ready Engineering

Most people can get a model to answer. Far fewer can get a system to hold. The kickoff is about that gap: what production AI engineering actually asks of you, and how the rest of the programme is built to close it.

The morning, session by session

• Sydon.AI and intelligent commerce: what the company builds, the problems it solves, and why commerce is where AI agents meet real operational pressure
• AI agents, properly. Reasoning loops, tool use, grounding and evaluation: what separates an agent that works from one that merely answers
• Modern product engineering: how production software is actually designed, reviewed, shipped and kept alive once real users depend on it
• How the industry works: version control discipline, code review, testing, observability and ownership
• The CUBE journey: the three rounds, the five domains, selection, and what is expected of you at each stage
• Networking: time with the Sydon.AI engineering team, the CodeQuesters community, and the people you may be podded with

What to bring

A laptop that can run the starter repository, a GitHub account you actually use, and questions. The problem statements are not released until 24 September, so nothing is under way yet. This is the session where the whole shape of the programme becomes clear.

Attendance is strongly recommended. Everything after this assumes it.