Vibe Residency at Edge Esmeralda 2026: A Preview

How the month works: coworking, a buildathon, experiments you can join, and a discount code.

May 04, 2026

A cross-post with Edge Esmeralda. May 30 to June 27, Healdsburg, California. We are accepting applications on a rolling basis. Apply here ☀️

TLDR

The Vibe Residency is returning as a month-long, open-doors living lab for AI-native builders inside Edge Esmeralda (May 30 to June 27, Healdsburg California)
Programming and The Day-to-Day:
- Expect daily open coworking sessions alongside top AI builders at the Vibe House, where anyone at Edge Esmeralda can show up and build at the speed of intuition ⚡
- A special focus on vibe coding with kids, and partnering with local businesses for meaningful AI transformation
- Week 3 Vibe Buildathon, open to everyone. More details coming soon, sponsors welcome to reach out.
Many exciting projects will be worked on throughout the month, including Vibey the community agent, a 3D virtual Edge Esmeralda world, the VibeCoin community token, and more.
Get your ticket for Edge Esmeralda and follow updates on X (@VibeResidency)

Zooming out... What is the Vibe Residency?

The Vibe Residency is a month-long living lab for AI-native builders, in community.

Last year at Edge City Patagonia, the first Vibe Residency brought together 15 residents and more than 250 people came through the doors. Over the month, 40+ events were held, a Vibe Buildathon featured 14 demos, and 30+ local kids joined in.

This residency has evolved into a larger project called Vibe Ventures.

At Edge Esmeralda this year, the Vibe Residency will be an open-doors residency for the Edge Esmeralda community: a place for anyone to accelerate their projects with the latest AI tools. Whether it’s building full-stack apps, AI agents, designing a beautiful experience, or building in public, there will be plenty of vibes to go around.

The motto: building at the speed of intuition, in community.

Programming and The Day-to-Day

Here’s what is most exciting over the course of the month.

Daily Coworking Sessions

The through line of the entire residency. Most days around 11am, after a morning workout, you can come to the Vibe House and build. These are open-doors coworking sessions where builders jam on the latest tools, push projects forward, and create together in an incredible environment.

The doors are open to anyone in the Edge Esmeralda community. Just show up.

Kids Programming

The residency is collaborating with Mitra Martin and the Kids Creative Residency to run programming for kids throughout the month. In Patagonia, kids ages 6 to 11 were building video games, designing worlds, and learning to vibe code alongside the adults. This time it goes even deeper. The Kids Are Vibe Coding.

Business Transformation for Local Healdsburg

The team is in talks with the Chamber of Commerce and CraftWork to host weekly sessions on how to implement AI and other smart tools for your business. This track is geared towards small and medium-sized businesses, especially those based in Healdsburg and the surrounding area.

The idea is simple: bring a real business problem (or a few), and get help with the tools that are changing everything right now. Learn more and get involved here.

The Vibe Buildathon (Week 3)

Building on the Vibe Buildathon from Edge City Patagonia, Week 3 will be a place for the whole community to arrive with a dream and leave with something real. One week to go all in on ideas and receive grants, prizes, bounties, and the energy of an entire village building together.

The doors are open to additional sponsors and people who want to post bounties for different projects. Official announcement coming soon. If interested, reach out on X (@VibeResidency) or email hello@vibeventures.studio.

Projects and Experiments

Beyond the programming, here are a few things being built and experimented with throughout the month.

Vibey: Our Community Agent

Vibey is a community AI agent at Edge Esmeralda, a fun, evolving character you can ping on Telegram, follow on X, or meet in person via its robot presence at the Vibe House.

In a world of many personal AIs, and with the broader Agent Village Experiment underway, Vibey’s goal is to be as socially connected, agentic, and helpful as possible. Vibey will make it easy to see what is happening, find the right events, and figure out who to meet, all by texting on Telegram or chatting with it in real life.

An Interactive Virtual World for Edge Esmeralda

An open source 3D virtual world for Edge Esmeralda is in the works, where people can walk around, find real events nearby on their phone, explore the world in VR, and have their agents join this interactive space.

It will also be a mobile app where people can see what’s happening on the calendar at any given moment in a simple, beautiful way.

Worth noting: kids will be invited to help build this “city of dreams” to inspire what’s possible when imagination meets the tools to make it real.

The VibeCoin Community Currency Experiment

The team launched a community currency called VibeCoin to invest in the vibe coding ecosystem. It was distributed at Edge City Patagonia across 10 builders at the Vibe Buildathon - and it will be distributed throughout the month at Edge Esmeralda.

Here’s the exciting part: Vibey will help decide who receives VibeCoin based on who is boosting the energy of the ecosystem the most. This will be a live experiment throughout the month. VibeCoin is planned to be integrated into more things, including merch and experiences that can only be purchased with the token.

Partnering with Vibe

Edge Esmeralda is a nonprofit, and programming like the Vibe Residency is made possible by people who believe in frontier building. Our partners are early believers, collaborators, and fellow experimenters, not sponsors in the traditional sense.

In Patagonia, this looked like a few different things. One partner grant-funded the launch of VibeCoin, our community currency, and lent his time as an active collaborator throughout the month. Another sponsored the Vibe Buildathon in exchange for builders exploring utility on his smart contract platform, which led to real integrations and workshops. A third sponsor came in with $5k tied to feature builds on her AI video platform; when the integration didn’t end up being the right fit for what builders wanted to make, it became a grant. We don’t force alignment that isn’t there.

There are many ways to plug in:

Fund an experiment through a grant. Seed a project, a track, or community infrastructure (like the kids programming, the local business workshops, or VibeCoin distribution).
Sponsor the Buildathon. Post bounties for projects you want to see exist, or back the week with a prize pool.
Bring a platform or tool. If you’re building something builders should know about and want to see real usage, integrations, and feedback, there’s room to collaborate.
Be an early believer. Many of the best partnerships start with someone who just gets it and wants to help the work happen.

If any of this resonates, reach out: hello@vibeventures.studio