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The Offline-First Challenge
Build software that survives a dead connection — and stays genuinely useful until it comes back. Any stack, teams of 1–4, scored in public against an automated resilience suite.
- Status
- Open
- Prize pool
- $12,000
- Entries
- 642 · 219 teams
- Closes in
- —
- Track
- Engineering
The brief
Most software quietly assumes the network is always there. This month, we pull the plug. Your task is to build something people would actually use — a note-taking tool, a field survey app, a code editor extension, a game, anything — that treats connectivity as a luxury, not a requirement.
Your submission runs against our automated resilience harness: it will be started offline, interrupted mid-sync, fed conflicting edits from two devices, and left in airplane mode for 72 simulated hours. What it does in those moments is most of your score.
What good looks like
- Full function offline. Core features work with zero connectivity from first launch — not just cached leftovers from a previous session.
- Honest sync. When the connection returns, merges are predictable and conflicts are surfaced to the user, never silently dropped.
- No lies in the UI. The interface tells the truth about what's saved, what's pending, and what failed.
Timeline
- Registration opensJun 14 2026
- Hackathon opens, harness availableJun 21 2026
- Team lock — no roster changes afterJul 12 2026
- Final submissions closeJul 19 2026 · 23:59 UTC
- Peer review windowJul 20 – 26 2026
- Winners announcedJul 28 2026
Starter kit
The harness runs locally so you can score yourself before you submit. Clone it, run it against the sample app, then break things on purpose:
- Resilience harness + scoring spec (same code we run server-side)
- A deliberately fragile sample app to practice on
- Reading list: CRDTs, service workers, sync engines — curated by past winners
Teams
- Teams of 1–4. Solo entries compete on the same leaderboard — four of the last ten podiums were solo.
- Rosters lock on Jul 12. You can merge teams before then; you cannot split after.
- One team per person. Entering twice under different names forfeits both entries.
Submissions
- Up to 5 scored submissions per team per day. Your best score counts, not your last.
- All code must be written during the event window. Libraries and frameworks are fine; pre-built products are not.
- AI-assisted coding is allowed and unremarkable. You own every line you submit and must be able to explain it in review.
- Winning entries must publish their source within 30 days under any OSI-approved license.
Fair play
- Probing the harness for exploits instead of building resilience scores zero and we will notice — the private test set differs from the public one.
- Peer reviews are double-blind. Coordinating reviews with other teams forfeits rank points for the season.
- The code of conduct applies everywhere: submissions, discussion boards, voice rooms.
Prize pool — $12,000
| Place | Cash | Rank points |
|---|---|---|
| First place | $6,000 | 500 |
| Second place | $3,000 | 350 |
| Third place | $1,500 | 250 |
| Best solo entry | $500 | 150 |
| Best write-up | $500 | 150 |
| Community pick | $500 | 150 |
| Every top-40% finish | — | 60 |
| Every scored submission | — | 2 |
How scoring works
70% automated. The resilience harness scores cold-start behaviour, sync correctness, conflict handling and data integrity. It runs on every submission and posts to the public standings within minutes.
30% peer review. After close, each team reviews three anonymised finalists against a fixed rubric: usefulness, honesty of the UI, and quality of the write-up. Review scores are themselves reviewed — careless reviewing costs points.
Public standings during the event use a fixed public test set. Final placement uses a private set revealed only after close, so the leaderboard you chase is honest but never the whole story.
Discussion board
Questions, harness bug reports, and the traditional mid-event despair thread. Organisers answer daily; past winners lurk generously.
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