​HTW 2025 VIBE Coding Hackathon 🚀⚡👨‍💻👩🏾‍💻

​Bring the energy. Bring the VIBES.

​The HTW 2025 VIBE Coding Hackathon lands on Saturday, Sept 13 at the Entrepreneurs Sandbox. Whether you’re a code wizard, design dynamo, student engineer, or just love building cool things — this is your chance to vibecode with the best in Hawaii.

​Expect creative challenges, rapid prototyping, and surprise twists to keep you on your toes. Whether a solo coder or rallying your crew, bring your laptop and dive into a whirlwind of excitement, code, and spontaneous greatness.

​This is the event at HTW where you'll find leading students compete alongside local VCs, and engineering leads square up against passionate hobbyists.

​💰 Prizes

​🥇 $3,000 – 1st Place

​🥈 $2,000 – 2nd Place

​🥉 $1,000 – 3rd Place

​Plus: bonus perks, credits & surprise awards!

​(Interested in sponsoring a prize or special track? Contact us.)

​🧠 Competition Format

​We’ll announce the secret challenge that morning — something like “build a site or web app for <TOPIC>.”

​You’ll have 3-4 hours to ideate, build, and ship something amazing.

​This keeps the field level, ensures all code is fresh, and rewards creativity, focus, and speed.

​🗓️ Tentative Agenda

​9:30 AM (SHARP) – Check-In. Team Matching (if required)

​10:00 AM – Challenge Reveal + Rules

​10:30 AM – Quick Lunch (provided, TBA)

​11:00 AM – Vibe Coding Begins

​2:30 PM – Project Submissions + Final Presentations

​3:30 PM – Awards & Prizes

​🔒 Important Notes

• ​This event is suited for those with some experience, ideally familiar with popular tools e.g. Cursor, Claude, Replit, etc, and have built at least one site or app.
  

• ​If you're just getting started with vibecoding, please spend 1-2 weeks building with the tools prior. [We'll curate and share a list of popular resources over the coming weeks.]
  

• ​Designers, marketers, and creators can still team up and contribute. We recommend doing so alongside friends who vibecode.
  

• ​If you're great at content creation or social media but don't want to directly compete, email us, we'd love to have your help during the event.
  

• ​Please arrive with your tools (e.g. Replit, Claude, Vercel, etc) setup, functioning, and with sufficient credits via your subscription or a trial.
  

• ​You must have the ability to deploy to the web during the event (vs solely your localhost).
  

• ​All participants under 18 must have a parent or legal guardian complete registration and be present during the event.
  

• ​Details are subject to change, including but not limited to the start / end time, prize tiers, and capacity.