To ensure a fair, fun, and productive environment for everyone, we have established the following rules for the hackathon. We want you to be creative and build something amazing, but please stick to these guidelines.

1. AI Usage Policy: Co-pilot, Not Captain

We embrace the future of coding, and that includes AI tools! However, this is a competition of your skills and creativity.

  • Allowed: You are welcome (and encouraged!) to use AI tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, ChatGPT, or Claude for autocomplete, debugging, explaining concepts, or generating boilerplate snippets. Think of AI as a pair programmer.

  • Not Allowed: You cannot use AI to generate your entire project or large, complex features without human intervention.

  • The "Explain It" Test: If you use AI to help write code, you must understand how it works. Judges reserve the right to ask you to explain specific parts of your codebase. If you can't explain what the code does, it doesn’t count as your work.

2. The Tracks

You must submit your project to one of the following three tracks. Be creative! We love to see out-of-the-box thinking.

  • 🎓 Education: Build tools that help people learn, teach, or access information more effectively.

  • 🎮 Entertainment: Games, streaming tools, music apps, or anything designed to bring joy and fun to users.

  • 🔗 Web3 (Sponsored by Solana):

    • Requirement: Projects in this track MUST utilize the Solana blockchain in some meaningful way (e.g., smart contracts, Solana Pay, token integration, etc.).

    • Support: New to Solana? Don’t panic! We are hosting a Solana Workshop at 10:30 AM. Attendance is highly recommended if you plan to compete in this track.

3. Fresh Code Only

  • To keep things fair, all code, design, and assets must be created during the duration of the hackathon.

  • You are allowed to use open-source libraries, APIs, and frameworks (we don't expect you to build React from scratch!), but the core logic of your "hack" must be written this weekend.

  • Please do not bring pre-existing projects to the event.

4. Team Size & Collaboration

  • Teams can consist of [Insert limit, usually 1-4] members.

  • You can work alone if you prefer, but hacking is usually more fun with friends!

  • If you don't have a team yet, look out for our team-building session at the start of the event.

5. Intellectual Property

  • You own what you build. The hackathon organizers and sponsors claim no rights over your code or intellectual property.