HackGuard
Soon

The hackathon operating system / coming soon

Every commit,
accounted for.

HackGuard runs the live side of your hackathon. It watches every team’s repository from kickoff to demo, alerts you the moment something looks off, and hands your judges evidence instead of guesswork.

Request early accessSee it work ↓
  • Liverepo tracking
  • Instantintegrity alerts
  • CitedAI agents
Mission control · Demo event21:13:07
Teams live
48
Pushes
1,284
Checked in
212/220
Open flags
2
  • AKRSMVteam-aurora
    verified
  • JDPLteam-nimbus
    review
  • SNTKHBteam-orbit
    verified
  • CQEWLMteam-delta
    verified
  • IVNRteam-kite
    silent 6h
  • GFOADUteam-lumen
    verified

watching 48 repositories…

Illustrative preview. Teams and data are fictional.

Built for every kind of hackathon

  • 36-hour college hackathons
  • Corporate hack weeks
  • Online global events
  • Sponsor challenge tracks
  • AI & agent hackathons
  • Web3 buildathons
  • Internal innovation days
  • Community game jams

9%

Across 22,183 Devpost projects, only about 9% of the code was written during the hackathon itself.

Imam & Dey, “Tracking Hackathon Code Creation and Reuse”, 2021.

Today, organizers check this by hand. After the event.

The MLH Organizer Guide asks you to investigate these questions yourself, project by project, and to dig deeper rather than disqualify on a hunch. Reusing libraries is fine. Submitting last month’s project is not. HackGuard answers each one while the event is still running.

  1. 01Did they start before the event?

    livePush receipts and a T0 snapshot of every repo

  2. 02Is it one big commit at the beginning?

    livePush size and timing, flagged as it lands

  3. 03Is every team member contributing?

    livePushers and authors matched to the roster

  4. 04Was it submitted to another hackathon?

    liveCode matched against repos that existed before T0

Questions adapted from the MLH Organizer Guide, “Cheating Check”.

01 / Live repository tracking

Watch the event being built.

Other platforms see a repo link when the deadline hits. HackGuard sees every push from kickoff onward, for every team, as it happens.

  • Push receipts, not commit dates

    Commit dates can be typed in by anyone. We record when GitHub actually delivered each push.

  • Who pushed, what changed

    Every push with its authors, size and files, per team, the second it arrives.

  • Silent teams surface early

    A team that stops pushing for hours gets a mentor, not a surprise on demo day.

Live feed1,284 pushes
  1. 10:05:50team-aurorapush +96 −31 · fix: oauth redirectverified
  2. 10:02:17team-deltapush pusher not on the team rosterreview
  3. 09:31:41team-nimbusevidence 41 files existed in another repo before T0evidence
  4. 09:31:05team-nimbuspush +5,812 −0 · 1 commitreview
  5. 09:14:22team-aurorapush +214 −12 · 3 commits · 2 authorsverified
  6. 09:00:00eventstart T0 snapshot · 48 team reposinfo
waiting for next push

02 / Integrity engine

Evidence, not verdicts.

A commit can claim any date. A push can’t: GitHub tells us when it arrived. When the two disagree, or code shows up that existed elsewhere before kickoff, you get an evidence card, not an accusation. Drag the timeline to replay a fictional event.

Integrity timeline claimed received
−12hT0+12h+24h+36h
team-aurora
team-nimbus
team-delta
No flags yet. Every push is checked as it arrives.

Pre-kickoff code

Repos created, or files present, before T0.

Back-dated commits

Commit dates far older than their push.

Off-roster pushers

Code pushed by people not on the team.

Cross-team copies

Near-identical code between teams in the event.

03 / Real-time alerts

The moment it happens, the right people know.

Set rules once: who hears about evidence, who handles reviews, who gets pinged when a team goes quiet. Alerts reach your organizer inbox, phones, Slack, Discord, email or your own systems, each with a link to the evidence.

Incoming

evidenceteam-nimbusjust now

41 files existed in another repo before kickoff

rule evidence → organizers + head judge, immediately

Alerts carry the evidence link, never a verdict. Quiet hours, escalation and de-duplication per rule.

  • Organizer inboxin-appsending…
  • Mobile pushhead judgequeued
  • Slack#organizersqueued
  • Discord#staff-integritynot routed
  • Emailintegrity@queued
  • Webhookyour systemsnot routed

04 / Agents

Agents for the busy work. People for the decisions.

Build flows the way you run your event: a trigger, the agents that investigate, the people who approve, the alerts that go out. Watch data move through every step, and talk to a flow while it runs.

Flows/Integrity watch

running

Triggers
Agents
Logic
Actions
triggerGitHub push

team-nimbus · +5,812 −0

agentIntegrity investigator

timeline · provenance · roster

logicEvidence strength

strong → yes

yes

no

humanOrganizer approval

Any organizer · 15 min SLA

actionSend alert

Inbox · Slack · head judge

actionAdd to review queue

Digest every 30 min

drag blocks · tap to select

Interactive preview: drag blocks, add new ones from the toolbar, send a command. Data is fictional.

  • 01Judge copilot

    A brief for every project: what was built, when, by whom, with citations.

  • 02Integrity investigator

    Turns raw signals into a case a person can check in two minutes.

  • 03Ops agent

    Answers rules questions in Discord or Slack, routes mentors, posts reminders.

  • 04Sponsor analyst

    Finds which teams used a sponsor's SDK or API, from the code itself.

  • 05Setup assistant

    “A 36-hour AI hackathon for 300 students” becomes a draft schedule and rubric.

05 / Judging

Every point has a receipt.

Judges get through more projects with less guesswork. The copilot suggests, cites the code behind each note, and leaves taste-based criteria to people. Scores are normalised across judges.

team-orbit · AI trackjudge: you

  • Technical depth 30%

    88

    Streaming leaderboard backed by a ranked cache

  • Completeness 25%

    67

    Core flows tested; offline mode claimed but missing

  • Built at the event 20%

    99

    82% of lines written after kickoff by all 3 members

  • Innovation 25%

    –8

    Left to the judge

grey copilot suggestion · boxed judge scoreweighted 7.95 / 10

1src/api/leaderboard.ts
12export async function GET(req: Request) {
13  const scores = await cache.topScores(eventId, 50);
14  return stream(scores.map(toRow));
15}

Hover or tap a citation. Every suggestion links to its source.

06 / How it works

From kickoff to demo day in four steps.

  1. 01 / GitHub App

    Teams connect their repo

    At registration each team installs the HackGuard GitHub App on its event repo only. Read-only, revocable, private repos welcome.

  2. 02 / T0

    Kickoff snapshot

    At T0 we record the state of every repo. From then on, every push is timestamped when GitHub delivers it.

  3. 03 / live

    Agents watch, alerts route

    Signals become evidence cards. Your rules decide who hears about what: inbox, Slack, Discord, email or webhook.

  4. 04 / demo day

    Judges get the evidence

    Each project arrives with a brief, a timeline and cited notes. People decide. Teams can respond to any flag.

07 / Everything else

One place for the whole event.

01

Registration & teams

Applications, approvals, team invites and a looking-for-team board.

02

QR check-in

Attendance, meals and swag, fast even on a weak venue network.

03

Mentor queue

Teams ask for help; the right mentor is routed in.

04

Sponsor usage reports

Per-sponsor reports built from dependencies and imports, not surveys.

05

Verified build badge

Honest teams get a public “built during the event” badge for their portfolio.

06

Post-event report

Participation, tech used, sponsor usage and integrity summary in one PDF.

08 / Compare

What other platforms don’t see.

Most hackathon platforms handle registration, submissions and judging well. HackGuard adds what happens in between.

CapabilityTypical platformSpreadsheets + chatHackGuard
Registration, teams, submissions✓Forms + spreadsheets✓
Judging portal & scoring✓Spreadsheets✓ with cited notes
Code activity during the eventRepo link at submission—Live, every push
Code that existed before kickoffManual reviewManualFlagged with evidence
Contributors vs registered teamManualManualChecked on every push
Real-time integrity alerts——Inbox, Slack, Discord, email
Sponsor usageSurveys, sometimes—Detected from code
Agents for ops & judgingRare—Built in, human-approved

“Typical platform” reflects publicly documented features of popular hackathon platforms as of October 2026. Some offer AI judging or plagiarism tools; none we found track repositories live during the event.

09 / Who it’s for

Built for hosts. Fair for everyone in the room.

Hosts

Run the event, not the spreadsheets. See every team live and hear about problems before demo day, not after.

Judges

Open each project with a brief of what was built, when and by whom, linked to the code.

Sponsors

See which teams actually built on your tools, and how deeply.

Participants

Fair play you can see. Honest work isn’t outshone by a project built months earlier.

Fair by design

  • 01

    Participants opt in when they register. Nothing is tracked without consent.

  • 02

    No team is flagged without proof a person can open and check.

  • 03

    Every decision is recorded, reviewable and open to appeal.

10 / Questions hosts ask

Do you need access to participants’ repositories?

Read-only access through a GitHub App that each team installs on its event repo only. Teams can revoke it at any time, and event data is deleted on a schedule you set.

Do private repos work?

Yes. Nothing has to be public; the GitHub App works with private repositories.

Does a flag mean a team is disqualified?

No. A flag is evidence for an organizer to review. The team can respond, and a person makes every decision.

Will AI pick our winners?

No. Agents draft briefs and rubric notes with citations. Judges score, and can ignore any suggestion.

Is AI-assisted code allowed?

Your rules decide. HackGuard shows the signals next to the team’s own disclosure, so judges can apply your policy consistently.

Can we keep using our current platform?

Yes. HackGuard is being built to run alongside the platform you already use: import your teams, then add live tracking and judging.

What will it cost?

Early-access events run free while we build. Pricing comes later, and early partners will hear first.

Early access

Running a hackathon next season? Get early access.

We’re onboarding a small group of organizers first, so every event gets hands-on support. Tell us about yours and we’ll be in touch.

  • Free while we’re in early access
  • Set up with you, before your event
  • Your feedback shapes what we build next
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