The whole agreement, in one page.

Open to anyone. No coding experience is required.

Organisers, judges, and their immediate families may take part but cannot win a prize.

You must register before the event starts. Registration is subject to host approval, and we may decline a registration without giving a reason.

Solo, or a team of up to 5 people including you.

Everyone registers individually. You do not need a team to sign up, and you do not name one when you register — you can form a team at the event. The team is declared on the submission form, which is where you list every member.

One submission per team. You may not enter the same project in more than one team, and a person may only be on one team.

The work has to happen inside the build window, which opens online on Saturday, October 31 at 8:00 AM ET and closes at the submission deadline. That is the whole point of the format.

Allowed before the clock starts:

• Thinking about your idea, sketching it, writing notes.
• Installing Mel and your tools, and setting up accounts you will need.
• Open source libraries, frameworks, templates, APIs and public datasets that anyone else could also use.
• Design assets you already own the rights to, such as a logo or a font licence.

Not allowed:

• Application code written before the start, including a private head start on the same project.
• Submitting an existing product with a weekend of changes on top.
• Work done by anyone not on your registered team, paid or otherwise.
• Building with another AI coding agent or assistant. Mel is the tool for this event — you confirm on the submission form that you built with Mel only.

Using an agent to do the work is the format, not a shortcut around it. Mel building your project during the event is exactly what we are asking for. Ordinary libraries, frameworks and APIs are still fine — the restriction is on swapping Mel for another agent.

One submission per team, sent through the submission form before Sunday, November 1 at 2:00 PM ET.

The form closes at the deadline. Late entries are not judged, so submit early — you can email corrections until the deadline.

The live session runs 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM ET on Sunday. It is the last chance to ask submission questions and get mentor feedback before the form closes. Attending is not required for a project to be accepted.

Every submission must include:

• A team or builder name, and a contact email we can reach you at.
• A link to the repository of what you built, set to public.
• A link to the deployed project, live and working.
• A recording of the Mel sessions you used to build the project. It should cover the build from the first idea through to the last change — the terminal, your instructions, and Mel carrying them out. A screen recording is fine and no editing is expected. A submission without it cannot be accepted. Paste a link anyone can open without signing in.
• One demo video, up to 5 minutes. Your idea, why it matters, and how it works. Slides, screen recordings and voiceover are all acceptable — you do not need to appear on camera. Paste a link anyone can open without signing in.
• A description of what it does, in 300 characters or fewer.
• The consent below, ticked.

Anything illegal, hateful, or built to harm people is disqualified without discussion.

You keep ownership of what you build. Nothing here transfers your work to us. What you grant is permission to show it.

This is the exact text you agree to when you tick the consent box on the submission form:

I agree to the event rules and to being contacted about the Global AI Hackathon, Agentic Day and future events.

In plain terms: we can post your project, your video, your screenshots and your name. We cannot sell your project or claim we built it. If you need something taken down later, email us and we will remove it from anything we control.

Your Mel sessions during the hackathon are recorded for training purposes. This applies only to the hackathon, not to your use of Mel before or after it.

Four criteria, weighted as follows.

• 35% — Usefulness — Does it solve a real problem?
• 25% — Execution — Does the working flow feel complete?
• 20% — Creativity — Is the approach fresh and thoughtful?
• 20% — Mel use — Did Mel materially help planning, building, debugging, reviewing or testing?

Our judging panel is announced closer to the event. Judges score independently and the scores are averaged. In a tie, the panel discusses and decides together. Their decision is final.

Prizes for the Global edition are being confirmed and will be announced here before the kickoff.

Winners are emailed at the contact address on their submission within five working days of the deadline, and announced on our channels after that. You have 14 days to reply and confirm your details. If we do not hear back, the prize passes to the runner up.

Any tax is yours to handle.

Be decent to each other. Harassment, discrimination and abuse get you removed from the event and from future ones. Report anything to pr@helloagentic.ai and we will act on it.

We may change the schedule or these rules if we have to. Material changes are emailed to everyone registered.

The hackathon is presented by Mel. Your use of Mel is covered by its own terms at openmel.dev.