A. Eligibility
The hackathon is open to all currently enrolled USC students.
Participants must register individually or as part of a team.
All participants must abide by the Code of Conduct throughout the event.
B. Team Formation
Teams may consist of 1–4 members.
Participants may form teams prior to or during the event.
No participant may be part of more than one team.
Teams must submit only one project.
C. Hackathon Timeline
All coding and project development must occur within the official hackathon period:
April 11 8:30 pm – April 12 6:00pm
Work done before the event is not allowed, except for:
Learning new tools
Setting up environments
Brainstorming ideas (no implementation)
D. Project Requirements
All projects must be:
Built during the hackathon
Original and not previously submitted to any competition
You may use:
Open-source libraries
Public APIs
Pre-trained models (must be credited)
🚫 Not allowed:
Submitting past projects or heavily pre-built solutions
Copying code without attribution
E. Use of AI Tools (Important for your theme)
AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot) are allowed
However:
Participants must understand and be able to explain their code
Over-reliance without understanding may impact judging
Any AI-generated components should be disclosed during submission
F. Outside Help Policy
Allowed:
Online resources (Stack Overflow, documentation, tutorials)
Public forums
Not allowed:
Direct help from mentors, professors, or external developers writing code for you
Pre-built private codebases not created during the hackathon
G. Code of Conduct
All participants just:
Be respectful and inclusive
Not engage in harassment, discrimination, or disruptive behavior
https://github.com/MLH/mlh-policies/blob/main/code-of-conduct.md
Please refer to the MLH code of conduct for reference
H. Intellectual Property
Teams retain full ownership of their projects
By participating, teams grant organizers permission to:
Showcase projects
Use submissions for promotional purposes
I. Disqualification
Teams may be disqualified for
Unsportsman-like behavior
Failure to comply with rules
Failure to comply with the Code of Conducts