Hackathoner: A Claude Code Plugin for Hackathon Sprints

The situation

Hackathons compress weeks of engineering into a single day. The usual failure mode isn’t bad code. It’s bad coordination: unclear priorities, forgotten API docs, no checkpoint discipline, and a demo that gets assembled in the final 15 minutes.

I wanted to see if Claude Code’s plugin system could encode a hackathon methodology that handles the project management layer automatically, freeing the team to focus on design decisions and technical integration.

What I built

A meta-plugin, not a template. Hackathoner doesn’t generate boilerplate. It reads a hackathon’s rules, researches the sponsor tools and evaluation rubric, then generates a custom project repo for that specific event. Contributors clone the repo and start building. No plugin install required on their end.

The setup pipeline (/hackprep). The team lead runs one command that chains through five phases:

1. Parse the rules page. Extract tracks, scoring rubric, deadlines, sponsor tools, submission requirements.
2. Research sponsor tools. Parallel agents investigate each tool’s API surface, SDKs, auth patterns, free tier limits, and Terraform support. Each produces a standalone skill (markdown reference doc with code examples, rate limits, and gotchas).
3. Generate domain skills. For compliance-heavy or regulation-heavy tracks, the plugin generates skills covering the relevant frameworks. At the TwelveLabs hackathon, this meant FCC, OFCOM, BCAP, GARM, MPAA, and TV Parental Guidelines.
4. Brainstorm constrained by the scoring rubric. Generate project concepts, pressure-test the architecture, auto-create GitHub issues with acceptance criteria.
5. Scaffold the project. Pick the stack, generate stubs and mocks, wire up tests, commit Feature Zero (the smallest thing that proves the full stack works end-to-end).

Stateless work loop (/hack). Detects the developer from git config, finds the highest-priority unblocked issue, checks for an approved plan (writes one if missing), creates a worktree, executes, opens a PR, and loops back. State lives in a GitHub tracking issue, so the system picks up where it left off across sessions and machines.

Checkpoint timeline. An 8-stage schedule (C0 through C7) maps the hackathon window with explicit gates: Feature Zero by hour 3, first real integration by hour 7, no new features after hour 23. The /checkpoint command audits progress and suggests scope cuts when behind.

Field test

I used the plugin at the TwelveLabs Video Intelligence hackathon (March 2026, LA). Two-person team, 23 hours, building a broadcast compliance video scanner with Marengo, Pegasus, and AWS Bedrock.

The plugin generated 12 project-specific skills, 5 slash commands, and a tracking issue. Over the hackathon: 190 commits, 31 plan documents, 41 issues filed, 25 PRs opened. The tool research alone (APIs, compliance frameworks, content rating systems) would have taken 15 to 20 hours manually. The plugin compressed it into skills that Claude could reference during development.

We didn’t place. The plugin managed tasks but didn’t manage storytelling, and the winning teams told better stories. That’s the v0.2 fix list.

The outcome

A working, open source plugin that encodes a project methodology into Claude Code’s skill and command system. The plugin demonstrates that Claude Code plugins can go beyond code generation into workflow enforcement, domain-specific context loading, and checkpoint discipline. The full write-up covers what worked, what didn’t, and what’s changing in v0.2.

GitHub: fshot/claude-plugin-hackathoner