Awards & Exhibitions · 2025
Kakao AI Top 100 Finalist
I passed the online preliminary round of AI TOP 100, held by Brian Impact and Kakao Impact, and was one of the 100 finalists. In the finals, I opened a Codex agent inside Cursor for each problem and solved them in parallel.
OutcomeSelected as one of 100 finalists
AI TOP 100
The competition was organized by Brian Impact and Kakao Impact and sponsored by the Ministry of Science and ICT and Kakao. Under the banner “A better world made together by technology and people” (기술과 사람이 함께 만드는 더 나은 세상), it looks for people who solve problems using AI tools. It is an individual competition, and everyone uses their own device and AI tools.
The preliminary round was held online on October 18, 2025, with everyone connected live at the same time, and the 100 who passed received a place in the finals and funding for AI tools. The finals were held in person on November 22, 2025, at Kakao AI Campus. The total prize pool, from the grand prize down to bronze plus special awards, was KRW 150,000,000.
In the finals — how I solved problems in parallel
The finals are a race to solve given problems accurately and quickly within a set time. Instead of taking on problems one at a time, I read the conditions, split the work into independent units, and opened one Codex agent per unit inside Cursor so they ran at the same time. While the agents ran, my job was to review and merge their results.
| Stage | Tool | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Problem breakdown | Cursor 2.0 agent window | Reads the problem and splits it into non-overlapping work units. |
| Parallel execution | Codex IDE extension × number of work units | Assigns one agent per work unit and runs them at the same time. Each agent has its own working folder, so they do not overwrite each other’s files. |
| Model | GPT-5-Codex | The model each agent uses. |
| Review and merge | Cursor editor, terminal | Runs the returned results myself to check them, then merges them into one and submits. |
This combination was possible because of tool changes right before the competition.
| Tool | Status as of November 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cursor 2.0 | Released October 29, 2025. Runs up to 8 agents in parallel and isolates them from each other with git worktree. Shipped alongside Composer, Cursor’s own coding model. |
| Codex IDE extension | Runs as a separate extension inside Cursor. Used with a ChatGPT subscription or an OpenAI API key. |
| GPT-5-Codex | Released September 2025. Selectable in Codex CLI and the IDE extension, and the default model for cloud tasks. |
What stayed with me is a sense that the less time you have, the more it matters to decide what to settle first and what to give up.