docs/context/hackathon_guidelines.md

## essential links
- **registration (hackiterate):** [join the platform](https://hackiterate.com/invite/63f20b24c20257b1c09c1350bb7ca261ffad93c8c507bd8a83828ce8cf6de80a)
- **luma event:** [event details](https://luma.com/mistralhack-online?tk=cdrtoo) (for status updates and communications).
- **hugging face organization:** [join the org](https://huggingface.co/organizations/mistral-hackaton-2026/share/buptmvynpxcentmuoumanagoghpdbrgmwos) (must join to receive credits and submit).

## timeline & deadlines
- **hf org joining deadline:** friday evening (paris time) to receive compute credits.
- **hacking starts:** saturday morning (local time).
- **hacking ends:** sunday, 4:00 pm (local time).
- **likes extraction:** friday, march 6 at 12:00 am paris time (to determine the most liked project wild card for the finals).
- **online winners announcement:** expected by friday, november 6.
- **finals:** monday, march 9 on the mistral youtube channel.

## hacking tracks
1. **fine-tuning (sponsored by weights & biases)**
   - **goal:** fine-tune a mistral model to perform a task that the base model struggles at.
   - **requirement:** upload the fine-tuned model and adapters to the official hugging face org.
   - **tools:** encouraged use of w&b models and weave for tracking and evaluation.

2. **anything goes**
   - **goal:** use any mistral model to create the best project.

## credits & resources
- **mistral ai:** $15 coupon for api credits.
- **hugging face:** $20 in "hugging face jobs" credits for joining the org.
- **11 labs:** credits available for text-to-speech (tts) integrations.
- **aws:** $100 in credits per person/team for amazon bedrock and cloud resources.

## rules & guidelines
- **originality:** everything must be built during the hackathon weekend. showcasing prior work is prohibited.
- **data preparation:** you are allowed to prepare and clean your datasets before the weekend starts.
- **open source:** to be eligible for judging, your code (github) and models (hugging face) must be public.
- **teams:** 1 to 5 members per team.

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*happy hacking!*