My Experience at Wikimedia Hackathon
Image Credits: Mike Peel, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
My Wikimedia Hackathon in Milan in 2026 was another reminder of why I always look forward to these events. Every hackathon brings together people from different parts of the world, united by a shared passion for open knowledge, and this year was no different. From the moment I arrived, there was that familiar energy in the air—developers catching up with old friends, first-time attendees introducing themselves, and everyone eager to build something meaningful over the next few days.
This year, Sanjay Thiyagarajan (Techwizzie) and I worked on integrating Wikidata as an external knowledge source into Wanda, a MediaWiki extension that acts as an AI-powered assistant for wikis. The goal was to make Wanda capable of answering questions using Wikidata's structured knowledge without requiring users to look up entity IDs or property IDs manually. Instead of users manually searching Wikidata for the information they need, we wanted the extension to understand their questions naturally and fetch the right information in the background.
The biggest challenge wasn't integrating with Wikidata itself—it was teaching the LLM how to ask the right questions. Instead of simply answering from its own knowledge, we wanted it to identify the correct Wikidata entities, generate the appropriate queries, fetch the required structured data, and then use that information to answer the user's question. Getting each of those steps to work reliably took quite a bit of experimentation, but seeing it all come together was incredibly satisfying.
One thing that felt a little different this year was the absence of the traditional closing dinner. Due to unexpected travel-related issues affecting the event budget, the organisers had to make difficult decisions, and unfortunately, the dinner couldn't take place this time. It was a little disappointing since it's usually one of the best opportunities to relax, celebrate everyone's work, and have conversations outside the hackathon venue. Still, it didn't take away from the overall experience or the friendships that were built throughout the event.
Of course, the hackathon wasn't just about coding. Milan was a wonderful city to explore whenever we had a break. We visited the magnificent Duomo di Milano, admired the beautiful architecture of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, and spent some time walking around the historic Sforza Castle. Every corner of the city seemed to have its own story, and wandering through the streets after a full day of hacking was the perfect way to recharge.
Looking back at our days in Italy, it was another opportunity to learn, collaborate, and contribute to projects that help strengthen the Wikimedia ecosystem. Every year leaves me with something new to learn, and Milan was no exception.