The fine print, kept short.

01Who can participate

• Anyone, anywhere — solo or in teams of up to 4 people.
• Participants must be at least 18 years old, or have parent/guardian consent.
• VideoDB employees and their immediate family members can participate but are not eligible for prizes.
• One person can only be on one team. No double-dipping.

02The build window

The hackathon runs Saturday, 16 May 2026 at 10:00 IST through Monday, 18 May 2026 at 11:00 IST — 49 hours.

• All meaningful code, design, and content must be created during this window.
• Existing open-source libraries, public APIs, and your own pre-existing utility code are fine to use.
• You can plan, brainstorm, sketch, and read docs before kickoff — just don't start writing the project itself.
• Late submissions won't be accepted. The form locks at 11:00 IST on Monday, no exceptions.

03What you have to build with

Your project must use the VideoDB SDK in a meaningful way — at minimum for media ingest or indexing or programmatic editing. Wrapping a thin UI around an unrelated tool doesn't count.

You're free to use anything else alongside it: any LLM, any framework, any database, any cloud. Build for any platform — web, mobile, CLI, Slack bot, anything.

04What you submit

Two things, both required:

1. A public GitHub repository with your source code and a README that explains what you built, how to run it, and which VideoDB primitives you used.
2. A 60–180 second demo video showing the project in action — YouTube, Loom, Vimeo, or any public video link. No edits required, keep it real.

Submit via the form on the landing page. You can re-submit any time before the deadline; only your most recent entry is judged.

05Code & IP

• You retain full ownership of everything you build. We don't take any rights or licenses.
• Your repository must be public at submission time so judges can read it.
• You're free to make the repo private after the event, take it down, ship it as a startup, or anything else.
• If your project includes third-party assets (icons, music, datasets), make sure their licenses permit your use.

06How judging works

A panel from VideoDB and our community partners will score every valid entry on:

• Idea (25%) — Is this a useful or interesting use of perception?
• Execution (35%) — Does it actually work? Is the code clean?
• Use of VideoDB (25%) — How well does it leverage the platform?
• Polish (15%) — Is the demo clear? Does the README explain itself?

Winners will be announced within 7 days of the deadline via email and on our Discord. All judging decisions are final.

07Conduct

Be kind. Don't harass anyone. Don't submit anything illegal, hateful, or designed to harm. We reserve the right to disqualify entries that violate this in spirit even if not in letter.

The hackathon Discord is moderated; if you see a problem, ping a moderator and we'll handle it.

08Data & privacy

• We collect what you submit through the form: team name, contact email, GitHub link, demo URL, pitch.
• We use this only for running the event — judging, communicating with you, announcing winners.
• We won't sell your data. We won't add you to a marketing list without asking.
• If you want your submission deleted after the event, email team@videodb.io and we'll handle it.

09Changes & questions

If we need to update these rules (rare, but possible), we'll post the change in the Discord and email registered participants. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision.

Questions? Email team@videodb.io or ask in the hackathon Discord — we usually reply within a few hours.