Join 1000+ students from around the globe at the University of Waterloo to build something incredible in just 36 hours. Hack the North is a student-run organization dedicated to making it easy for anyone to dream big. The event aims to engage and empower students of all backgrounds and experience levels by providing the resources to turn ideas into reality.
What to Build
The hackathon is open-ended: build anything you want. Participants have 36 hours to create the project they are most excited about.
Submission Requirements
To participate, teams must submit:
- A project built during the hackathon.
- A link to source code, including all design assets created at the event.
- The badge ID of every team member (as it appears under the QR code on their badge).
- Selection of every sponsor prize the team wishes to be considered for before 2:00 PM EDT on Saturday.
- An optional but recommended demo video.
Judging Criteria
Projects are judged on originality, user experience, technical complexity, and the "WOW factor." Judging pitches should be live demos rather than slide decks or product pitches.
Prizes and Tracks
Hack the North features a variety of sponsor challenges and tracks:
- Main Award: There is no first, second, or third place in the main award; top projects become finalists. Prizes for finalists are a surprise. Projects are encouraged to be creative, experimental, weird, or useful without needing to be real startups.
- OpenAI: Prizes for using the OpenAI API and Codex to build ambitious projects. Awards include lunches with recruiters, ChatGPT Pro subscriptions, and swag.
- RBC (Signal in the Noise): A challenge to design custom agents/harnesses that ingest massive research data via an MCP tool to answer precise questions. Prizes include a digital camera and a mechanical keyboard.
- Shopify (Hack Shopping with AI): Build innovations where AI meets commerce. The winning team receives Shop Cash per person.
- Warp: Best Developer Tool prize for projects improving the developer experience. Winners receive Keychron keyboards.
- GPTZero: Best Use of GPTZero API for projects protecting information quality using detection APIs. Prizes include AirPods Pro, swag, and credits.
- QNX: Create an embedded system using QNX OS and open-source AI modules. Prizes include cash awards.
- Dryft: A company challenge to make an autoregressive transformer generate tokens as fast as possible. The fastest correct implementation wins $2000.
- Elastic: Best Use of Elasticsearch for turning messy data into actionable insights using agentic systems. Prizes include a Meta Quest 3S and Bose headphones.
- Baseten: Best Use of Baseten for creative integration of inference and training platforms. Prizes include a trip to SF, interviews, and credits.
- Rox: Best AI Agent for systems leveraging LLMs to operate on messy, real-world data. Prizes are $10K for first place and $2K for second.
- CSE (Log & Order): A cybersecurity challenge to review internal traffic logs and identify threats using robust detection solutions.
- Tether: Best Sovereign App challenge based on the
hello-pear-qvac-tui repository to create local AI experiences. Prizes are $1,000 and $500.
- Intact: The Quoting Interface of the Future challenge to reimagine car and tenant insurance via AI chatbots or agents. Prizes include gift cards and interview opportunities.
Important Note: Registering on Devpost does not grant access to the event. Attendance requires admission through the official application process.