These are the CruzHacks-flavored standard competition rules used at MLH Member Hackathons, forked from MLH's repo.
This document serves as an addendum to the CruzHacks 2026 Participation and Release Agreement. It explains and expands on the rules detailed in the CruzHacks 2026 Participation and Release Agreement. All terms and rules listed in this document and the CruzHacks 2026 Participation and Release Agreement apply.
Should there be a direct conflict between this document and the CruzHacks 2026 Participation and Release Agreement (i.e. an activity explicitly allowed by one document is explicitly prohibited by the other), the conflicting rule from this document should be disregarded, and the rule in the CruzHacks 2026 Participation and Release Agreement should be followed. All other terms and rules listed in this document will continue to apply.
Remember that hackathons are like marathons. Some people go to compete but most people take part to better themselves and have fun. Whatever the reason is you're at a hackathon, make sure you're upholding the hacker spirit by collaborating with other teams, helping beginners, and having fun.
- Teams may have a maximum of 4 hackers.
- Teams should be made up exclusively of accepted hackers who are not organizers, volunteers, mentors, judges, sponsors, or any other privileged position at the event.
- Teams can gain advice and support from organizers, volunteers, sponsors, and others.
- All work on a project must be done at the hackathon.
- Teams can use an idea they had before the event.
- Teams can work on an idea that they have worked on before (as long as they do not re-use code).
- Teams can use libraries, frameworks, or open-source code in their projects. Working on a project before the event and open-sourcing it for the sole purpose of using the code during the event is against the spirit of the rules and is not allowed.
- Adding new features to existing projects is allowed. Judges will only consider new functionality introduced or new features added during the hackathon in determining the winners.
- Teams must stop hacking once the time is up. However, teams are allowed to debug and make small fixes to their programs after time is up. e.g. If during demoing your hack you find a bug that breaks your application and the fix is only a few lines of code, it's okay to fix that. Making large changes or adding new features is not allowed.
- Projects that violate the Code of Conduct are not allowed.
- Teams can be disqualified from the competition at the organizers' discretion. Reasons might include but are not limited to breaking the Competition Rules, breaking the Code of Conduct, or other unsporting behaviour.
After hacking finishes, teams must submit their projects to Devpost by the submission deadline.
A project's Devpost submission must have two components to be eligible for judging:
- a link to the project's code repository; and
- a brief write-up on the project page.
After submission, teams will show their projects each other and to the judges.
Judging will take place synchronously in-person during the Expo/Demo section of CruzHacks 2026. Teams will be notified of their table number prior to the start of the Expo/Demo section, and at least one member of the team must be present to present their project to judges in order for their submission to be considered for prizes.
It's important to note that there may be multiple rounds of judges that come to judge your project, especially if you submitted your project to multiple prize categories. As such, it is important to remain at your table for the entire duration of the Expo/Demo section of CruzHacks 2026.
You are encouraged to present what you have done even if your hack is broken or you weren’t able to finish. It's okay if you didn't finish your hack—that happens all the time! Completion is only one part of the judging criteria, so you might still do well. Also, demoing is not just about the competition. It's a chance to share with others what you learned and what you tried to build—that's what hacking's all about! For being courageous enough to demo, you'll receive a special MLH "I Demoed" sticker—it doesn't matter how good the demo is! In the case that you don't have anything to demo, you can give a presentation about what you tried and what you learned. Hearing what other people learned is interesting and inspiring for other attendees.
Each project may only be submitted to one Tech Cares track (health, sustainability, justice, fintech), but teams can opt-in to multiple CruzHacks Category Prizes and Sponsor Prizes.
Teams will be judged on these five criteria. During judging, participants should try to describe what they did for each criterion in their project.
- Technology: How technically impressive was the hack? Was the technical problem the team tackled difficult? Did it use a particularly clever technique or did it use many different components? Did the technology involved make you go "Wow"?
- Design: Did the team put thought into the user experience? How well designed is the interface? For a website, this might be about how beautiful the CSS or graphics are. For a hardware project, it might be more about how good the human-computer interaction is (e.g. is it easy to use or does it use a cool interface?).
- Completion: Does the hack work? Did the team achieve everything they wanted? Does the project do what it's suppoed to do?
- Ideation: How creative or original is the project idea?
- Applicability: How well does this project fit the prize track it's in?
These criteria will guide judges but ultimately judges are free to make decisions based on their gut feeling of which projects are the most impressive and most deserving.
It's important to note that these judging criteria do not include:
- How good your code is. It doesn't matter if your code is messy, or not well commented, or uses inefficient algorithms. Hacking is about playing around, making mistakes, and learning new things. If your code isn't production ready, we're not going to mark you down.
- How well you pitch. Hacking is about building and learning, not about selling.
- How well the project solves a problem. You can build something totally useless and as long as you're learning and having fun, that's a good hack! Sometimes a pointless project is one of the best hacks!
So don't worry about coming up with the next big idea or building the next Facebook. You'll have plenty of time for that outside the hackathon. just focus on learning, having fun, and making new friends. At the end of the day the skills you learn and the friends you make might lead to the next big thing—but you don't have to do that to win a hackathon.
The competition is just a part of the hackathon. To make the most out of the event, try something new, teach other people, and make new friends!
Happy Hacking from CruzHacks and the MLH team!