One command for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Windsurf and other agents — installs from the upstream repo (current HEAD; it ships 6 skills — pick hackathon when prompted).
Drop the mirrored SKILL.md into your skills directory. Global (all projects):
Or scoped to the current project:
The skill is mirrored as plain markdown — tell your agent:
Or have the skills CLI generate a one-shot prompt (pipe it straight into your agent):
Or pull the raw file into a terminal session:
Copy the skill directory straight from GitHub:
Skill contents
Hackathon Submission
Track choice → scannable description → <3-min demo script → checklist. Optimize for a judge who has 90 seconds, not a reader who has 10 minutes.
Context handoff
At start, read .claude/context/idea.md and .claude/context/build.md if present — pull the pitch, wedge, and what actually works from them instead of asking again.
Workflow
1. Pick the least-crowded track
Winning a thin track beats placing in a fat one. Per candidate track: estimate entry volume, fit with what’s actually built, and judge appetite (sponsor tracks often have the fewest serious entries).
- Winner patterns + track history: hackathon-winners.md — every Colosseum grand champion and track winner, with what they built
- Live crowdedness check: ext/colosseum — query 5,400+ past submissions for cluster density and gaps (requires
COLOSSEUM_COPILOT_PAT)
2. Write a scannable description
Judges read 100+ submissions. Yours gets one skim deciding whether it gets a real read:
- Tagline: what it does, one sentence, no jargon
- First paragraph: problem + who has it
- Bold the one thing that’s novel
- “What works today” list — demo-able claims only, never roadmap dressed as product
- Why Solana (one concrete reason: speed, fees, composability with X)
Full structure (200–500 words, paragraph-by-paragraph): hackathon-submission-guide.md. Score the draft against judging-criteria.md before submitting.
3. Demo script (<3 minutes)
| Time | Beat |
|---|---|
| 0:00–0:20 | Problem — one user, one pain, no market-size slides |
| 0:20–0:40 | What you built, one sentence + UI first appears |
| 0:40–2:10 | The demo — one happy path, real data, on-chain proof (explorer tx) |
| 2:10–2:40 | The novel part — the thing competitors don’t have |
| 2:40–3:00 | Traction/team one-liner + the ask |
Shot-by-shot template and recording tips: demo-video-script.md. Rule: if the demo can fail live, record it.
4. Submission checklist
- Track chosen by crowdedness, not vanity
- Tagline passes the “non-crypto friend” test
- Description scannable in 90 seconds (bold claims, short paragraphs)
- Demo video <3 min, real transaction shown
- Repo public, README quickstart actually works from clone
- Deployed link (devnet OK) + program ID listed
- Team and contact info complete
- Pitch deck attached if track requires one — use pitch-deck
After the hackathon: grants
Losing the track doesn’t mean losing the funding. Same artifacts (description, demo, deck) feed grant applications:
- Superteam Earn (earn.superteam.fun) — bounties + grants up to ~$10k USDC equivalent, fast cycles, regional Superteams
- Solana Foundation grants — milestone-based, public-good angle; reuse the scannable description with an ecosystem-benefit paragraph
- Grant-shaped ideas dataset: superteam-ideas.json
Note: upstream apply-grant ships no inert reference files (SKILL.md only — excluded from routing), so grant guidance lives here.