Velvet Rope is a playful AI event curation and simulation system built at Anthropic's UI Hackathon in February 2026. It was a fun hackathon experiment, not meant to be taken seriously, exploring what happens when you let AI and biometric signals drive event planning decisions.
The Concept
Upload a CRM export of potential attendees, and the system enriches their profiles, generates personalized pitches, uses webcam-based facial expression analysis to gauge reactions, curates a ranked guest list, and then simulates how the event will play out, round by round, tracking group dynamics, conversations, and goal alignment.
The 7-Stage Pipeline
- The Line. Upload a CSV of attendees with names, companies, skills, interests
- Dossiers. Claude enriches each profile with summaries, skills parsing, and unique value propositions
- The Plea. Claude generates personalized pitches in multiple tones (confident, humble, humorous, passionate, analytical)
- The Bouncer. Webcam + face-api.js detects facial expressions as attendees watch their pitch, calculating a "yesness score"
- The List. Ranks applicants by biometric signals, admits top candidates
- The Venue. Configure venue type, capacity, and "DJ" parameters (theme, goal, icebreakers, dynamics)
- The Floor. Claude simulates the event across multiple rounds, tracking agent positions, moods, group formation, and outputs
Key Features
- Multi-stage AI pipeline from upload to full event simulation
- Real-time facial expression analysis via webcam (face-api.js)
- Claude-generated profile enrichment, pitches, and event simulation
- OpenAI TTS delivers pitches by voice
- Agent-based simulation with mood, energy, and satisfaction tracking