Today we are releasing Symfony AI 1.0.0-BETA1, the first pre-release on the road to 1.0, and also kicking off the Symfony AI & MCP Hackathon: Four weeks of building with Symfony AI and the official PHP MCP SDK to find out what is still wrong with it.

The hackathon is online, free, and open to everyone. It runs from 26 October to 22 November 2026, and you can register now at symfony.com/hackathon.

What the beta means

The feature set for 1.0 is settled, and from here the work is fixing rather than redesigning. The backward compatibility promise starts at 1.0.0 final, not at this tag. So, if the next four weeks turn up something that genuinely has to move, this is the last window in which it can.

Install it with:

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$ composer require symfony/ai-bundle:^1.0@beta

The official PHP MCP SDK (mcp/sdk) is heading for 1.0 right alongside it, and is in scope for the same feedback.

Why a hackathon

Because a beta is only as good as the things people try to do with it.

Four weeks of real projects is the hardest either library will have been pushed, and that is the point. When something breaks, misbehaves, or simply reads wrong at three in the morning, that is a result, and we want to know about it. A reproduction from a real project is worth more than any amount of testing in a vacuum, and what gets reported now is what 1.0.0 ships without.

So please tell us what you hit:

How it works

  • Team up, or go solo. Sign in with Symfony Connect and either start a team or join one with an invite code. A team of one is perfectly fine.
  • Build anything. There are no fixed topics. Use any provider, any store, and the PHP MCP SDK for MCP servers and clients.
  • Ship two things. A public repository anyone can clone and run, and a 90-second video of the real thing.
  • Deadline: 22 November 2026 at 18:00 CET. You can keep editing your entry until then.

What the jury looks for

There is no point building for the jury. Show what Symfony AI and MCP let you do that you could not do before.

  • A creative idea — something surprising, useful or just fun, and more than another chatbot. Build what you would want to exist.
  • It actually works — a real, working demo, not a concept of what it could do one day. Bonus points if a juror can clone it and run it themselves.
  • What it unlocked — use the components and the protocol in ways nobody expected.
  • Craft — code you would merge: idiomatic Symfony, typed, tested where it counts, and a README that gets a stranger from git clone to a running demo in five minutes.

The jury and the prizes will be announced shortly — both are worth showing up for. Keep an eye on the hackathon site.

Credits from Hugging Face

Hugging Face sponsors $20 of Inference Providers credits per developer to prototype with the models on the Hub. You will find the coupon on your team dashboard once you have registered.

Thank you to our sponsors

The hackathon is supported by Symfony, Hugging Face, SensioLabs, Upsun, Sulu and JetBrains.

Get started

Head to symfony.com/hackathon, register with Symfony Connect, and pick a team — of one, if you like. Then go and break something before 1.0.0 ships.

Published in #Symfony AI