DevMarketplace Hackathon Guidelines

Please review these requirements carefully before building and submitting your project.

Core Project Requirements 1. Real AI Usage

Your project must include real, live calls to an AI model as part of its core functionality.

Examples include:

• OpenAI

• Anthropic

• Google

• Other hosted or self-hosted AI models

Using AI only to help you write your code does not count as AI functionality.

2. Real Database

Your application must store user or application data in a real persistent database, such as:

• PostgreSQL

• MongoDB

• Supabase

• Firebase

• MySQL

• Other persistent databases

Your data must survive an application restart.

The following do not qualify:

• In-memory arrays

• localStorage-only persistence

• Hardcoded JSON data

3. Working Authentication

Your application must include working authentication with:

• Sign-up

• Sign-in

• Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

4. Professional Interface

Your application should have a clean, polished, and consistent user experience.

Please make sure your final demo has:

• No broken layouts

• No unfinished screens

• No placeholder text

• Consistent styling and navigation

Component libraries are encouraged, including:

• shadcn/ui

• Material UI

• Bootstrap

• Other established UI libraries

Code & Development Rules 5. Ideas Can Be Pre-Existing. Code Cannot.

You may enter the hackathon with an idea you have previously considered or worked on conceptually.

However, the code being judged must be written during the hackathon.

6. Repository Creation

Create your project repository after the official build kickoff.

Your repository's first commit must be timestamped after the build kickoff.

7. Commit Throughout the Hackathon

Teams are expected to commit code throughout the event.

Do not build the entire project locally and push one large commit at the end.

Your Git history should reasonably reflect the development of your project during the hackathon.

8. Resources You May Use Without Declaring

You are free to use the following without declaring them as pre-existing work:

• Open-source libraries

• Public APIs

• DevMarketplace Code Gigs

• Starter templates such as create-next-app

• AI-generated code

9. Pre-Existing Work

Anything else that existed before the hackathon must be declared during problem-selection sign-off.

Judges will score only the work your team completed during the hackathon.

Submission Requirements 10. Public Repository

Your final submission must include a publicly accessible repository link.

11. README

Your repository must include a README with clear setup instructions so judges can understand how to run your project.

12. AI & Reuse Disclosure

Include a short disclosure covering:

• AI tools used

• AI models used

• Reused components

• Relevant licenses for reused components

DevMarketplace Requirements 13. Create Your DevMarketplace Account

Every participant must create an individual DevMarketplace account on Day 1.

Do not create only one account per team.

Creating your account activates:

• Your Founding Dev status

• Your hackathon AI model credits

• Your individual DevMarketplace developer profile

14. Publish at Least 2 Code Gigs Per Team

Each team must publish at least 2 Code Gigs on DevMarketplace during the hackathon.

Publish Code Gigs as you build, rather than uploading everything at the end of the event.

15. Code Gigs Must Come From Your Project

Your Code Gigs should contain reusable pieces of code that your team actually wrote during the hackathon and extracted from your project.

Examples include:

• Authentication setup

• API wrapper

• Reusable UI component

• Prompt utility

• RAG utility

• Database schema

• Custom hook

• Reusable backend service

• Integration utility

Code Gigs will be monitored and may also be considered during judging, so make sure they represent useful and legitimate work produced by your team.

16. Code Gig Documentation

Each Code Gig must include:

• A clear title

• A short description explaining what it does

• Setup or usage instructions sufficient for another developer to integrate and use it

17. Do Not Republish Code You Didn't Write

Do not publish third-party or open-source code as your own Code Gig.

If your project uses an existing open-source component, link to the original project and respect its original license instead of republishing it as your own work.

18. Credit Your Team

When publishing a Code Gig, add your team members as contributors.

This ensures the Code Gig appears on each contributor's DevMarketplace profile and everyone receives proper credit for the work.