Hackathon Rules

SouthwestMN Hacks is open to students and recent graduates. Here's who can compete:

• High school students – From any grade level
• College and university students – Undergraduate or graduate
• Recent graduates – Within 1 year of graduation
• All skill levels – Beginners to advanced, everyone's welcome!

You must be registered and present at the event to compete. If you're not sure if you're eligible, just ask—we want as many people as possible to participate!

You can work solo or form a team. Here's how teams work:

• Solo hackers welcome – Flying solo? That's totally fine. One-person teams are allowed.
• Maximum team size: 4 people – Teams can have 2, 3, or 4 members
• Form teams anytime – Already have a team? Great! Don't have one? We'll have team formation activities at the start.
• All members must be registered – Everyone on your team needs to be a registered participant

The goal is to build something new during the hackathon. Here are the project requirements:

• Start fresh – Your project must be started during the hackathon. No pre-existing projects allowed.
• Use existing tools – Feel free to use any libraries, frameworks, APIs, and existing tools. That's encouraged!
• Planning is OK – You can brainstorm and plan before the event, but code must be written during the 12 hours.
• Submit on Devpost – All projects must be submitted through Devpost by the deadline.
• Open source encouraged – We love open source, but it's not required. Your call!

When in doubt, ask yourself: "Am I building something new in these 12 hours?" If yes, you're good to go!

AI tools are a part of modern development, and we embrace that at SouthwestMN Hacks:

• AI tools are allowed – GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI assistants are all fair game.
• Be transparent – Mention in your project submission if you used AI tools and how they helped you.
• Understand your code – You should be able to explain all the code in your project. Judges may ask questions.
• Use AI to learn – The goal is learning. Use AI to learn faster, not as a replacement for learning.

Think of AI tools as powerful assistants that can help you build faster and learn new things. Just make sure you understand what you're building!

Here's how prizes work:

• Distributed per team – Prizes are given to teams, not individual members. Teams decide how to split prizes.
• Must be present to win – At least one team member must be at the awards ceremony to claim prizes.
• Winners announced at 7:30 PM – Stick around for the closing ceremony!
• Everyone presents – All teams get to present their projects, regardless of prizes. Sharing is part of the fun!

Remember: Prizes are cool, but the real reward is what you learn and build. Some of the best projects don't win prizes—they just keep growing after the hackathon!