How a Yard actually works.

Yes. Holding a spot isn't the same as showing up, so everyone with a claim, spot holders and waitlisters alike, confirms before the clock starts. Check-in opens 48 hours before kickoff and closes the moment the Yard goes live (Monday, 18:00 UTC). It's one click, from the email or on the Yard page.

Miss it and your spot releases at kickoff so the next person on the waitlist can build. That's not a punishment, it's how a full Yard stays full of builders instead of a grid of ghosts.

Yes, if it still has open spots. Claiming stays open for the first 48 hours of the build, through Wednesday at 18:00 UTC. After that the roster locks.

Joining live counts as your check-in, so there's nothing extra to confirm. You just have less time than the people who started Monday, and that's your call to make.

Every Yard has one, and it's public from the moment the Yard is posted, before the clock starts. You don't have to wait for kickoff to know what you're building toward.

A theme is a real constraint, not a vibe. Past themes have been sharp lines like “No accounts” (build something useful with zero sign-up, zero login, zero email) or “Backlog.” If your build doesn't fit the line, it's off-theme. With the model usually left open, the theme is the thing everyone shares.

Hackyard sets it by default. But the theme is also the thing a sponsor can set , a company or an indie backer can bring the constraint itself: a theme, a model, a tool, an API, or a challenge for the yard to build against.

That's deliberate. The constraint is the most valuable thing a sponsor can own, because it shapes every build in the Yard instead of sitting in a banner nobody looks at. Sponsored Yards are also where prize pools come from, a backed Yard can put real money or resources behind the Yard on top of the standard badges and champion sponsorship.

Either way it reaches every builder at the same moment, and no sponsor gets a say in who wins, the ballots decide. Sponsor a Yard →

Yards run the 1st and 3rd week of every month, Monday to Sunday. Two a month, evenly spaced, with an off week in between for a breather and the next theme reveal.

It's meant to be predictable. If it's the first or third Monday of the month, a Yard is kicking off. You can plan around it instead of watching for a surprise.

One calendar week, start to finish:

• Kickoff: Monday, 18:00 UTC
• Build: Monday through Friday
• Submissions close, voting opens: Friday, 18:00 UTC
• Voting: Friday through Sunday
• Champion crowned: Sunday, 22:00 UTC

18:00 UTC in your time zone: 10:00 AM PST · 1:00 PM EST · 6:00 PM GMT · 7:00 PM CET · 11:30 PM IST · 3:00 AM Tue JST · 5:00 AM Tue AEDT. Crowning at 22:00 UTC: 2:00 PM PST · 5:00 PM EST · 10:00 PM GMT · 11:00 PM CET · 3:30 AM Mon IST · 7:00 AM Mon JST · 9:00 AM Mon AEDT.

So you build across the work week, the builders rank and the members vote over the weekend, and the winner is called on Sunday. Every Yard runs on the same rhythm.

• Repo URL, required
• Writeup, required, 500 characters max
• Model declaration , required, and published on your submission page
• Demo video, optional but strongly recommended (YouTube, Vimeo, or Loom play inline on your submission page)
• Screenshot, optional, and it's what people see first on your card

Yes. Dependencies, frameworks, and CLI scaffolds are fine. Your own pre-written project code is not. Running create-next-app, installing packages, or starting from a public boilerplate is normal work, not a head start.

The real question is: did you start from something you built earlier? That's the only version of this that gives anyone an unfair edge, and it's exactly what the repo timing panel measures.

So don't burn a day of your build week hand-rolling something you could install. “All code written during the build week” means the code that makes your project yours.

Every submission page shows its repo's timing panel, pulled live from GitHub: when the repo was created, how many commits it has, and the span from first to last commit, next to the Yard's build window.

If a repo was created before kickoff, the panel says so, in public. We don't remove anyone for it; we show the dates and let the yard weigh them. Repo creation dates come from GitHub and cannot be edited by the author. Commit dates can be rewritten, so the panel labels them as context, not proof.

Most Yards are open-model. Bring Claude, GPT, Grok, Gemini, something local, or no AI at all. The theme is the constraint, not the model, so what you already pay for is enough to enter.

A Yard can name a specific model, but that's the exception, usually because a sponsor brought it, or because the point of that Yard is seeing one model in dozens of different hands. When a Yard names one, its page says so up front. If the page doesn't name a model, it's open.

It did. Early on, the plan was to require a single model (Grok 4.5). We changed it after builders told us plainly they'd rather bring their own model, and they were right.

Naming a model doesn't just set a constraint, it sets a bill. If you already pay for one AI plan, a single-model Yard asks you to buy a second subscription just to enter, and a lot of good builders quietly pass, people we'd never hear from. For an open community that's the wrong trade. A sharp theme does the leveling instead, and everyone shows up with what they've already got.

Yes, and it takes about five seconds. Every submission carries a short model declaration, what you used, under your handle, shown on your submission page.

On an open-model Yard it's not a rule you're held to, it's just context for curious voters and a bit of honest data on what people actually reached for. Use whatever you like; say what it was.

A receipt is an optional link showing your AI session, a shared chat link, a console usage page, or a session log committed in your repo. Attach one and your card shows a Receipts marker during voting.

You do not need one, and skipping it is not held against you. Most builders won't bother, and that's fine. A receipt shows a session existed, it does not prove that model wrote what shipped, and we never label it as verification. The strongest thing it says is “this builder showed their work.”

Straight answer: we can't detect it, and we won't pretend to. Nothing in a repo reveals which model wrote the code. There's no watermark, and “AI detection” tools can't reliably tell human from AI, let alone one model from another. Anyone claiming to verify this is guessing.

So even on a named-model Yard, we lean on the same declaration and optional receipt, plus the fact that swapping wouldn't buy you much, you win on a peer vote for what you shipped, not on whose model was marginally stronger. We enforce what's checkable and stay honest about the rest.

The builders. There is no judging panel and no organizer override. From Yard #6 on, everyone who ships a build ranks their top 3 other builds, and those rankings crown the Champion. The members get their own award, Members’ Choice. Points and votes are counted and badges are awarded automatically. Hackyard's only action is closing the Yard.

Through Yard #5, every signed-in member had one vote and the most votes won. The full new system is in the Voting section below.

Because they're the only people guaranteed to have spent the week inside that theme and looked at every build. In Yards #4 and #5, most votes came from accounts created during the voting weekend itself, and in Yard #5 a batch of throwaway accounts was made just to vote (all 28 of those votes were removed before the crown). An open vote rewards whoever brings the biggest crowd. A builders' ranking rewards the build the field respected most.

It's still no judging panel. Nobody picked by Hackyard decides anything. It's the people who built right alongside you, and the members still get a real award of their own.

Your call, it's your ballot. But the things worth weighing:

• Does it fit the theme? Everyone got the same one.
• Does it actually work? A demo video beats a description.
• Did they ship something real in one build week, under the same constraints you had?
• Context, not verdicts: the repo timing and model panels are there to inform your read, not to hand you a ruling.

Starting with Yard #6, every Yard has two awards, decided by two different groups:

• The Champion is ranked by the builders who shipped in that Yard. It carries the cash prize (when there is one), the Champion hoodie, and the year backed by Hackyard.
• Members’ Choice is voted by the members. It carries the Members’ Choice badge.

Nobody votes in both. If you shipped, your say is the Champion ranking. If you didn't, your say is Members’ Choice.

1. Open the field. Your ranking stays locked until you've opened every other build in the Yard. Opening means clicking a build's demo, its code, or its live Try it link. Each one gets checked off as you go.
2. Pick your top 3. 1st place is worth 3 points, 2nd is worth 2, 3rd is worth 1. You can only rank builds you've opened, never your own, and never the same build twice. You can reorder until you submit.
3. Say why your #1 deserves it. One line, up to 140 characters, plain text. It's required.
4. Submit. It's final once submitted, and nobody sees it until voting closes.

In most Yards, yes, and it's the point: the Champion should be picked by people who looked at the whole field, not just their friends' builds.

In a big Yard there's a cap. If there are more than 20 other builds, Hackyard assigns you 20 at random to open instead. Every builder gets a different set, and you can't choose which ones you skip, so nobody can dodge their strongest competition, and across all the builders every build still gets seen. Any build you rank still has to be one you opened, assigned or not.

Because a real reason is hard to fake, and it's the best part of winning. The reasons given for the winning build are shown on its Champion page, anonymously, as the builders' own words on why it won. Same for Members’ Choice.

Only the winners' reasons are shown. Your name is never attached. The winning builder can hide any reason from their page.

Any signed-in member who meets both of these:

• Your account existed before the Yard kicked off. Accounts made during the Yard can't vote in it, so nobody can sign up mid-vote to swing it.
• You didn't ship a build in that Yard. Builders who shipped rank the Champion instead.

You get one vote. Open a build (demo, code or Try it) before you can vote for it, then say in one line why it's your pick. The winner gets the Members’ Choice badge.

If fewer than 3 builders turn in a ranking, the Members’ Choice winner is crowned Champion. Two rankings shouldn't decide a Champion on their own.

The rule is set before anyone builds, so everyone knows it going in. Builders get the most important vote on Hackyard. If they don't use it, the decision goes to the community.

Hackyard never shows who voted for whom, not to builders, not to members.

After the crown, every ballot is published without names: the picks, in order, and when they were cast. That way anyone can add up the results themselves and check them. Reasons stay anonymous too.

Share it everywhere, that's part of the game. Just know how it lands: your friends can only vote in Members’ Choice, and only if their accounts existed before kickoff. The Champion is decided by the builders.

What breaks the rules: extra accounts, paying for votes, or builders trading rankings (“rank me first and I'll rank you first”). Ballots like that are removed, and the crown report says how many and why.

This one matters, so here's the full answer.

Yes, position is an advantage, the first card in a grid always gets more eyes than the last. If we listed submissions in the order they arrived, whoever submitted earliest would get a permanent, unearned edge, and “every project gets seen” would be a slogan rather than a fact.

So from the moment the first build lands right through to the end of voting, the order is shuffled, and reshuffled continuously. That covers the build week too, not just voting: submissions get browsed and shared all week, so ordering them by arrival time would hand whoever shipped first a head start before voting even opened.

Concretely: the page regenerates about once a minute, and every regeneration produces a brand-new random order. Nobody holds the top-left slot for more than a minute at a time, across a build week and a weekend voting window that's thousands of reshuffles, so every build rotates through the good positions and the bad ones roughly equally.

Once voting closes, the shuffle stops and submissions are ranked by Champion points, because at that point the page is showing results rather than asking for votes.

• Champion badge, permanent, on your profile
• Featured on the home page , your build, pinned as Reigning Champion
• A published writeup on what you made and how
• The big one: a 1-year sponsorship from Hackyard , 365 days pinned to the home page, boosted on our X, first dibs on every future Yard, and a permanent Champion badge

Three in a row is the max. Win three Yards back to back and you sit out the next one as an exhibition builder: you can still build, ship, and show it off on the Yard page and Show & Tell, but it won't be ranked or voted on. Then you're back in.

A small community stays alive when newcomers believe they can win. Exhibition keeps the best builders building without the result feeling decided before the week starts.

• Champion, 1st place
• Top 3, 2nd and 3rd in Champion points
• Members’ Choice, the build the members voted for (from Yard #6 on)
• Shipped, everyone who submitted a finished build
• Participant, for claiming a spot (removed if you release it)
• Regular, shipping two Yards in a row
• On Deck, for joining the waitlist when a Yard fills
• Scout, for bringing new builders in, the tier climbs with qualified referrals
• First 16, a one-time commemorative for the 16 builders who shipped Hackyard's first-ever Yard
• Founder, a one-of-one that only belongs to Hackyard's creator and can't be earned