Live · Year 01 · In Progress
The handbook is
being written.
Right now.
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Contributions
Across all 3 phases · updated live
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Contributors
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Topics Mapped
An Annual Hackathon Handbook, Written by the Community, for the Community.
No single voice.
No outdated guides.
Just builders,
helping builders.
"I wasted my first hackathon lost and mentor-less, so nobody else has to."
We see newcomers show up to hackathons with zero direction. They have so many questions, but hackathons are too fast to allow that.
Most of the guides out there are either outdated, lacking depth, or just way too academic. You get the "what," but never the actual "how" and "why", so you're left scrambling through the real parts on your own.
The community has the knowledge, but it's buried in a thousand random conversations with seniors, mentors, and within Discord groups. We're missing a resource that actually covers the messy hackathon reality: everything from scrounging for a team on Discord at 2:00 AM to surviving the "demo-day curse" when your front-end suddenly stops talking to the blockchain.
Genesis is an annual hackathon handbook where the community converges to architect and compile a definitive guide. Instead of a single voice attempting to cover everything, we crowdsource expertise, each contributor documenting exactly what they know best.
The result is a resource that's more comprehensive, balanced, and current than any individual could ever produce. It's updated annually, forged from real hackathon experience, and entirely owned by the community.
Each year, contributions open to anyone with hackathon experience. Contributors write the handbook through three structured phases, then the team finalizes it and publishes.
Structure first. Contributors lock the topic list: which topics actually matter, what's missing, and what every first-timer needs to know.
The advice. Each locked topic gets the real, tactical tips: the stuff you learned the hard way and wish someone had told you.
The fun round. Everything that didn't fit a box: one-liners, do's and don'ts, war stories, and the tool that saved you at 3am.
On the team, not the contributors. Final triage, clean-up, and sign-off, then the handbook goes live on 29 July.
Every submission runs the same flow: submit (form) → review → clean up → publish. The golden rule: humans decide what goes in. Nothing reaches the page without a person reading it first.
Topics evolve each year based on what contributors surface. Year 1 is shaped by real experience, not assumptions.
A contribution is a small, focused unit: one person sharing one thing they know well. Below is a real submission from Phase 02, Describe It: one tip per box, action + reason, like you're telling a teammate.
We do not rush. We figure out the timeline first, even before writing a line of code. Hour 0-4: pick an idea and stick to it, zero pivots. Hour 4-12: the designer does wireframes. Hour 12-24: core feature development.
Hour 24-30: stop adding features. Start integrating. Hour 30-36: bug fixing, UI polishing, and recording the demo. The last hours belong to the pitch, not the code.
Genesis is more than a document. We're building the platform that keeps it alive: the handbook itself, the live wall behind it, and the pipeline that turns community submissions into a published edition every year.
The first edition is out: 45 real tips across 9 topics, every one credited to the contributor who lived it. Read it →
Synced hourly from GitHub. Every accepted contribution puts a real face on the wall.
Reader feedback goes straight into the next review cycle. Edition 02 starts with what you tell us. Tell us →
Moving from Google Forms to a built-in submission flow, with voting and a story feed on the roadmap.
Written by the community. For the community. Every year.
Read Edition 01All contribution tasks live in our Discord. Pick what you want to work on, submit when you're ready. Filtering happens at submission review, not at entry.
Join the Genesis DiscordAnyone with hackathon experience. You don't need to know everything. You just need to have been there. Pick a task in Discord and submit when you're ready.
People who believe in this problem and want to help shape how Genesis grows, operates, and sustains. From designers to developers, DM us in Discord.
"Every hackathon leaves behind knowledge and lessons. Let's build Genesis and put them all in one place."