hackathon-brainstorm

name

hackathon-brainstorm

description

Brainstorm, evaluate, and blueprint award-winning hackathon projects using a bumwad-coding (architecture-phase) methodology with mandatory data/API feasibility scouting. Use whenever the user mentions a hackathon, hackathon ideas, hackathon prep, sponsor tech challenges, demo day projects, prize categories, or wants to pressure-test a hackathon concept — even if they don't say "brainstorm." Pushes past generic ideas toward projects judges remember and that actually ship.

Hackathon Brainstorm (Bumwad v2)

5 phases: Research → Concept → Data & API Scouting (mandatory) → Design Development → Refinement.

Core winning criteria (required)

1. Non-obvious sponsor tech use — sponsor would screenshot it. Heuristic: use their tool on a corpus they'd never think to index.
2. <60s wow moment — name it explicitly or concept fails.
3. Narrative hook — one sentence on stage/in video.

Amplifiers (never bolt on)

Cultural authenticity · Real stakes · Domain expertise

Phase 1 — Research

Ask in one batch: hackathon, deadline, submission format (live vs async video), theme, sponsors, every prize, rubric, team, unfair-advantage angle (required), constraints. Then web_search the hackathon page and past winners.

Phase 1.5 — Prize Structure Analysis (always)

Compute (social+virality points) vs (1st−3rd delta). If virality ≥ delta → distribution-primary hackathon, add Shootability ×2 and Audience leverage ×1 to Phase 2 rubric.

Phase 2 — Concept (8–10 ideas, ranked)

Criterion	Weight
Non-obvious sponsor tech	×3
Wow moment clarity	×3
Narrative strength	×2
Cultural authenticity	×1
Real stakes	×1
Domain expertise	×1
Data feasibility	×2
Build feasibility	×2
Prize fit (name it)	×2

Data and build feasibility are separate scores. A 5-on-build / 2-on-data concept is a trap. Flag top 3.

Phase 2.5 — Data & API Scouting (MANDATORY, web_search every claim)

Data table per top-3 concept:

Need	Source	Access	License	Size	Effort	Fallback

API table:

Capability	Sponsor API	Backup	Rate limits	Auth	Demo cost

Go/no-go: any row with High effort + no fallback → concept drops or gets scope-cut now.

curl-before-commit: prompt the builder to hit each sponsor API with curl before Phase 3.

Phase 3 — Design Development

• Logline, 60s demo script (timed beats), Narrative hook, Sponsor tech map
• Technical architecture (required):
  • Data pipeline — source → cleaning → chunking (token size) → embedding model (named, dims) → vector store (named, index config)
  • Retrieval path — query → top-k → re-rank → prompt template (actual text)
  • Generation path — API, endpoint, params, cached vs live
  • Frontend — framework, hosting, state
  • Real vs. faked-for-demo table (every demo fakes something — make it explicit)
  • Secrets & rate-limit math
  • Deploy target (named)
• Scope cuts · Risk log (top 3) · Prize target (compute floor for virality-primary)

Phase 4 — Refinement (red team)

• 20-min-later memory test · laziest competing version · wow-fail backup · which sponsor champions internally · shareable permalink artifact?

Output format

Markdown, ranked tables, filled scouting tables, skimmable on phone at 2am.

Anti-patterns

• "AI-powered [thing]" with no twist · chatbots as primary UI · dashboards without stories · 10-min explanations · sponsor tech as plumbing
• Corpora that don't exist yet + >20% of time budget to build
• APIs never hit with curl before concept-doc written
• Live backends during async video recording (cache the hero output)

Reference

See references/past-winners.md for encoded heuristics (physical-object-on-camera, unfair-advantage corpus, sleeper-category math, cache-the-wow rule).