Questions?
Let's debug them.

No. The Programming Jam is designed to be approachable for participants who are still learning. Preparation workshops will introduce the development workflow and tools used throughout the event.

No. You should be willing to learn, experiment, solve problems, and work with your team. AI is intentionally part of the development process.

TBD

Participants should bring their laptop and charger. TBD for any additional event-specific requirements that have not yet been finalized.

No. Participants who do not already have a team can use the Programming Jam team formation process to create or join one.

TBD

TBD

TBD Team changes are subject to organizer rules.

Yes. This is an AI Programming Jam. AI use is encouraged throughout the development process.

Yes. AI may generate part or all of your application. There is no requirement to manually write a specific percentage of the code.

Yes. Standard paid consumer AI plans such as ChatGPT Plus are allowed.

No. The highest-tier or advanced premium AI plans are restricted to maintain fairness between participants.

Participants are not restricted to one AI provider. The same AI access principle applies: free and standard consumer paid tiers are permitted, while the highest-tier or advanced premium access is not.

If participants are unsure whether a specific plan is permitted, they should ask an organizer.

Yes, provided they comply with the competition's AI access policy.

Your team is responsible for the final application. If something breaks, you must be able to investigate the problem, direct your tools toward a solution, test the result, and verify that the application works.

Yes. JAM.26 includes three workshop days designed to prepare participants for the development workflow they will use during the competition.

Day 01 covers planning and the development workflow. Day 02 covers full-stack development and debugging. Day 03 covers deployment, domains, search discovery, and performance. Together they walk through the same workflow used on competition day.

TBD

All three workshop days, including what each one covers, are on the Workshops page.

That is part of the challenge.

Teams will receive the official application brief when the challenge is released. The exact application should remain secret beforehand.

The challenge will be released on competition day.

No. Teams may prepare and practice beforehand, but they may not begin building a solution specifically for the competition challenge before it is officially released.

Teams should be prepared to adapt during the competition.

Only members of your registered team may provide human assistance with the competition project. AI assistance is allowed.

No. Competing teams may not share challenge-specific code, prompts, solutions, debugging solutions, implementation details, or strategies during the competition.

Each team submits:

1. Live production website
2. Custom domain or subdomain
3. GitHub repository
4. Excalidraw functional diagram
5. Working Firebase authentication
6. Working persistent data functionality
7. Required application features
8. Completed unexpected change request
9. Google Search Console setup
10. Bing Webmaster Tools setup
11. PageSpeed Insights result

The application must be functional during judging.

Yes. The final application must be publicly accessible for judging, deployed and connected to a domain or subdomain.

No. The judged submission may not be modified after the official deadline unless organizers explicitly authorize it.

Projects are scored out of 100 points across seven categories, covering functional completeness, technical implementation, problem solving and adaptability, UI/UX, system understanding, production readiness, and the final demonstration. The full breakdown is on the Competition page.