1. Common sense: the following rules are not necessarily exhaustive, but we trust that some amount of common sense should be used as a participant to any hackathon. This includes keeping your work station clean and not causing any ruckus.

  2. All members of your team must have checked-in to Catapult and be on the discord server.

  3. At least one member of your team must be physically present to demo your project to judges in the second round.

  4. All coding/building must have taken place during hacking hours. (We check all Github repos for additions made before or after the hacking period and for any large copy/paste contributions!)

    1. Caveat for hardware projects: you are allowed to bring in hardware purchased/built before the hackathon. However, you should disclose exactly what was made before the hackathon to keep up with the spirit of Catapult.

  5. Using Artificial Intelligence and any “vibe-coding” technique is permitted. We note that LLMs may have a tendency to use repetitive patterns or suggest ideas that are not innovative/creative. Please take this into consideration as it may impact your score for the first round of judging.

  6. Keep projects safe-for-work (refer to rule 1 and use common sense please).

  7. No one outside of your team should contribute to the project during the hackathon. Teams can have at most 6 members.

  8. Accurately represent your project during judging. We may ask you to provide us with steps to replicate your demos to ensure compliance.

  9. Do not bribe organizers or judges with homemade cookies (Alex is an exception to this rule).