No Halloween costume and the party is tonight? TechCrunch has your back with a set of last-minute Halloween costume ideas for tech nerds, ranked by how little effort you actually want to put in.
Halloween costumes for tech nerds (Credits: TechCrunch)
The joke running through the list is that the best tech costume is the one you can assemble from stuff already lying around your desk, and this year the AI boom gives everyone plenty of material.
Recursive Self-Improvement, Meta Glasses and the Cute AI Avatar
Be “recursive self-improvement.” AI leaders like Dario Amodei and Sam Altman have fretted publicly about models that can improve themselves without human input, so why not dress as the idea? TechCrunch suggests wearing whatever version of yourself you picture becoming every New Year’s, complete with a self-help book like “Atomic Habits,” a yoga mat, a huge bottle of water, and an exit in the middle of the party to “go to therapy.” Brag about your Oura Ring sleep score to complete the effect.
Be a deceptively cute AI avatar. Meta and OpenAI both recently launched AI assistants with creepily cute faces, which TechCrunch likens to an Elizabeth Holmes situation: they look innocent, so you underestimate the potential disaster. Make yourself big and fluffy with a poofy puffer jacket or feather boas, add a distinctive hat or glasses to mimic the ChatGPT Dot look, and spend the night asking people for read/write access to their Gmail.
Be the guy recording you with Meta glasses. Spooky and instantly recognizable, and you probably already own a pair of glasses. You will be, as the piece puts it, perfectly in keeping with the Halloween spirit.
The PHP Vulnerability and Sleepy Bryan Johnson
Rounding out the suggestions are a PHP vulnerability for the backend crowd and sleepy time Bryan Johnson for anyone who follows longevity Twitter. The full list leans on the running tech-industry gags of 2026, so the funniest costume at the party may just be the one your fellow nerds recognize instantly.
Either way, the bar for effort is low and the payoff is high. Grab the yoga mat, the puffer jacket or the glasses, and you are party-ready in under ten minutes.
Also Read: Meet TokenEconomizer: Microsoft’s Open-Source Plugin That Cuts Coding Agent Costs by Up to 30% and OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic Back New AI Scraping Opt-Out Standard
Source: TechCrunch — read the full story there.
