Rule book

The two hard constraints

Everything else is advice. These two are non-negotiable.

1. ≤ 500 million parameters

Every AI model you use in your application must have 500 million parameters or fewer. This is measured against the model's architecture/parameter count, not its quantized file size. You may use multiple models in one project, as long as each individual model is under the cap.

Tip: a 22M MiniLM often does more than a 400M model you can't fit. Shrink the problem, not just the model.

2. No external AI APIs

Models must run locally within your app. You may not call OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, the Hugging Face Inference API, Ollama cloud, or any other remote inference-as-a-service. All inference happens on the participant's own machine/device at runtime.

You may use non-AI APIs: maps, auth, payments, storage, public data sources, etc.

Acceptance criteria

Your project is accepted for judging if and only if all of the following are true:

1. The code lives in a public GitHub repository created after September 10, 2026. Repositories older than this date are not accepted.
2. The repository contains a README whose first line is exactly: This project was submitted to the ryze.ai hackathon by [NAME OF SUBMITTER]. (Replace [NAME OF SUBMITTER] with the submitter's name.)
3. The README clearly indicates the project is submitted to the Ryze AI hackathon.

As long as these are met, your project is accepted. The 500M / no-API rules are then enforced during judging — projects found to violate them are disqualified and forfeit the prize.

Additional rules

• Original work. All code must be written during the hackathon period (after Sep 10).
• Open source. Publish under an OSI-approved license (MIT, Apache 2.0, GPL, etc.).
• Attribution. Credit model and dataset licenses in the README.
• Discord required. All participants must join the Discord server to receive updates.
• Submission method. Submit via the form on the site — only GitHub URLs are accepted. Other links are rejected.
• Solo or teams of up to 4. A participant may belong to only one team.

Timeline

All times UTC.

Date	Milestone
Sep 8, 2026	Registration opens
Sep 28, 2026	Registration closes
Sep 29, 2026	Kickoff livestream, hacking begins
Oct 27, 2026	Submissions due
Nov 12, 2026	Winners announced

Judging criteria

Submissions are scored and ranked — the top entry wins the $1,000.

Criterion	Weight	Looks for
Impact & Utility	25%	Solves a real problem, genuinely useful
Creativity & Novelty	25%	Original approach, surprising small-model win
Technical Execution	30%	Solid integration, clean code, on-device inference
Presentation & Demo	20%	Clear, engaging, polished