This is a team sport.

Participants are required to be part of a team. You are welcome to come with a team fully or partially formed. You are also very welcome to show up with an idea you want to build a team around or to find an idea/team that you like. There will be plenty of time Friday night to match people up.

Embrace the non-human.

Teams must included at least two humans and one or more non-humans. We are taking a very wide view on what counts as a non-human. This could include a long running Claude session, a ChatGPT-powered agent, an OpenClaw instance, a robot of your own design, or something else entirely.

Go for the gold.

This is a competition. Our judges will decide a winner on Sunday night. The winning team gets $1,000 and the second place team gets $500. Teams will be judged on the commerical and/or social value of their idea, to what extent they have realized that idea, and how thorougly they engaged with their non-human collaborator(s).

Not all gold glitters.

Prizes are great, but there is more value to find at HarborHack. Networking with judges and mentors might be the connection that unlocks that next step in your career. Finding now collaborators may help you take that side project to the next level. Inspiration strikes more often when you are in a room full of the inspiring.

Requirements

Submission Requirements

To be eligible for judging, every team must complete a Devpost submission before the deadline.

Your submission should include:

Project Name

A clear name for your project.

Project Description

In 2–5 paragraphs, describe:

the problem you tackled
your solution
which challenge(s) you entered
what makes your project unique

GitHub Repository

Provide a public repository whenever possible.

If your repository cannot be public (for licensing or other reasons), explain why and provide judges with a way to review the code.

Non-Human Collaboration Story

Because this year's theme is Agent In The Loop, every submission should include a brief reflection describing your collaboration with one or more non-humans.

Examples include:

Which AI systems did you use?
How did responsibilities evolve?
Where did your teammate influence the design?
What surprised you?
What didn't work?
What would you change?

We're judging the collaboration—not just the software.

Live Demo

Every team will present live.

Your demo should clearly communicate:

the problem
the solution
the role of your synthetic teammate
lessons learned

Judging Criteria

Projects will be evaluated on:

Commercial and/or social value. Is this a business idea that could really work? Or is it something that does good for society? Or possibly both?
Completeness of realization. How much did you build and at what level of quality? A demo can be a slide deck, but a web app is better.
Depth of non-human collaboration. Was a non-human a serious contributor to your project? Creative or experimental approaches get bonus points.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$1,500+ in prizes

+ other prizes

First Place

$1,000 in cash

1 winner

Second Place

$500 in cash

1 winner

Honorable Mention

2 winners

Honorable mentioned projects engaged in an unusually strong way with the challenge.

Judges

Emma Perry
Web Brightly

Kirk Truax
Ignite Digital

Will Horn
g/d/n/a

Dr. Qian Zhang
College of Charleston

Bradley Dalton-Oates
CharlestonHacks

Tom Schipper
CFO Growth Experts

Dave Ingram
Querri

Judging Criteria

Value
One third of your score depends on the size of the commercial or social value of your project.
Achievement
One third of your score depends on how much you achieved during the hackathon.
Non-Human Collaboration
One thrid of your score will depend on how effectively you collaborate with at least one non-human teammate.

College of Charleston, Harbor Walk	Public
$1,500 in cash	3 participants