In-Depth Criteria and Tips

Value + Human Insight (0–15)

Whether you truly understand the person you're building for, and whether what you've made would genuinely matter to them, whether that's solving a problem, saving them time, or bringing them joy.

Tips: Focus on a specific real person or audience, not a generic "everyone," and show you understand what they'd get out of this, be it usefulness, delight, or something in between. The best projects tap into a real need or desire that others overlook and back it up with evidence, whether that's user conversations, data, or lived experience. Strive to make judges feel like they can see your intended person reaching for this.

Creativity + Design (0–15)

How novel and creative your idea is, and how well it's designed. Are you doing something fresh, and is it genuinely pleasant to use? Have you thought through the user experience?

Tips: Push past the obvious first idea and pair it with polished, intuitive design so the concept and the craft reinforce each other. The experience should feel cohesive and thoughtful, not just functional. Strive for a "why didn't this exist already?" reaction.

Feasibility + Scalability (0–10)

Whether your idea could actually work and reach people in the real world right now, and whether it could grow from there.

Tips: Don't just make it work in the demo; think through the real technical, legal, and social barriers and have credible answers for them. Show a sensible story for how this grows beyond the prototype, whether that's more users, a wider audience, a community, or a sustainable model. Strive to prove you understand the obstacles rather than ignoring them. You don't need to have all of this solved but you should have thought through it and that should be reflected in your pitch and demo.

Technical Execution (0–10)

The depth of what you actually built. Is it more than something you could vibe-code in a couple of prompts?

Tips: Show real engineering, whether that's meaningful integrations, non-trivial logic, clever mechanics, or a hard problem genuinely tackled, all working reliably by demo time. Judges don't expect production-level polish given the timeframe, but there should be evidence you solved something difficult rather than purely prompting Codex/Cursor/Claude with a high level idea. Strive to build something that clearly took real technical effort.