Run a hackathon

A hackathon wraps one of your assessments in a public page. Builders apply on the page, you pick who takes part, and each accepted builder opens the assessment from the link in their acceptance email. Hackathons are on the Enterprise plan.

Before you start

Build the assessment first. Its challenges, time limit and AI settings are what builders get on the day, so treat it like any other assessment: pick or import the challenges, choose whether AI agents are on, and set it Live before you send acceptances.

Create the hackathon

Open Hackathons in the dashboard and choose New hackathon. Give it a name and choose Create draft. The editor has three tabs.

Page

• Basics: the name, a headline and a one-line summary. Wrap words in the headline in *asterisks* to set them in the accent style. The summary also shows in search results and on shared links.
• About the event: your own words in Markdown: the challenges, prizes, judges, anything.
• Questions: Kendor answers the platform questions (connecting an AI account, what happens on Start, what builders need). Add your own below them.
• Official rules: Markdown. Applicants accept them to apply, and they're shown on their own rules page. You can't publish without them.
• Cover image, hosts and a contact email.
• Languages: write the page in any of English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Russian. A language you haven't written shows your default one. Page chrome, forms and emails are already translated.

Schedule & form

• Applications: when applications open and close, and when people hear back.
• Build: the build window and Time per person. Builders start any time in the window, then get their own hours from their first click. Late starters still get their full time.
• Judging and results: optional dates, shown on the page.
• Places: how many builders to accept, within your plan, and whether to keep a waitlist.
• Assessment: the assessment accepted builders work in.
• Application form: name and email are always asked. Country, GitHub, LinkedIn, company and role can each be off, optional or required, and you can add your own questions. Turn on Let people offer to judge to add a Judge role with its own form.

Dates are entered in UTC. Visitors see them in their own time zone.

Publish and share

Choose Publish in the header. The page goes live at kendor.io/hackathons/<your-link>, with localized addresses for each language, a link preview and event data for search engines. Unpublish takes it down again; you can only delete a hackathon once it's unpublished.

Applications

People apply without a Kendor account. An application only counts once the applicant confirms their email from the link Kendor sends. GitHub and LinkedIn answers are checked and saved as profile links.

On the Applications tab:

1. Filter by To review, Accepted, Waitlisted, Declined or Unconfirmed email, or search by name or email.
2. Select applications and choose Accept, Waitlist or Decline. The tab shows how many places are filled.
3. Choose Email decisions to send every decision that hasn't been emailed. A decision you change later is emailed again.
4. Choose Export CSV for a spreadsheet of applications.

Each acceptance email carries the builder's own link into the assessment. It stays valid until the build window closes.

The build day

Builders open their link, sign in to their own Claude or ChatGPT account in the sandbox terminal if the assessment uses their own account, and press Start any time in the build window. Their clock runs from that click. The editor saves as they work, and when the time runs out the work is saved and submitted.

Point builders at How to connect your own Claude or ChatGPT account before the day.

Review the builds

Each build is an attempt on the assessment, so it opens on the usual review page: the final code, test runs, the activity timeline and the AI agent's prompts. If AI summaries are on, each build gets one for a first read.

Privacy

Applications are personal data, so Kendor doesn't keep them forever. Applications whose email was never confirmed are deleted after 7 days, ones that weren't accepted 30 days after the event ends, and accepted builders' and judges' after a year. The privacy export and erasure tools cover applications too. Use Delete application when someone asks to be removed.