A free online AI hackathon open to all of India: dates, format and scoping the build (registration closes 15 Nov)

Homingo Hack Days is a free, online AI hackathon open to anyone in India. This post has the dates, the format and a few notes on scoping a build of about two weeks, for anyone who is deciding whether to enter.

The facts

• Format: online, open to all of India, free to enter
• Tracks: Agents, Automation, LLM apps
• Team size: solo, or a team of 2 to 4
• AI tools: allowed
• Registration closes: 15 Nov 2026, 11:59 PM IST
• Build phase: 21 Nov to 6 Dec 2026
• What you submit: a public GitHub repository and a short demo video
• Prizes and certificates: Rs 5,000 to the winner, recommendation certificates for the top 3, and a certificate for everyone who submits
• Organiser: Homingo

Registration: https://hackathon.homingo.co.in/?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=hackdays

Scoping a build of about two weeks

About two weeks is short. These notes are general advice for any hackathon of this length, not judging criteria.

Pick one user and one job. "An agent that helps students" is a theme. "An agent that reads a course PDF and makes a revision plan with page references" is a project. The second one can be shown working quickly.

Get the unglamorous path working first. For an agent, that is one complete run from input to a useful result, with the tool calls logged. For an automation, it is one real input going through every step without manual help. For an LLM app, it is one question answered from your own data with the source shown.

Decide early how you will know it works. Write down ten realistic inputs before you write much code. Run them every day. A short table in the README of what passed and what failed says more than a long feature list.

Keep the repository readable. Since the submission is a public repository, a README with setup steps, a sample input and the expected output matters. Someone should be able to clone it and run it.

Record the demo from a clean start. Show the project working from a fresh run, including one case where it handles a bad input. Keep it short.

Using AI tools

AI tools are allowed here, so the useful question is how to use them well. Let the assistant write the boilerplate, and spend your own time on the parts that decide whether the project works: the data, the prompts, the checks, and what happens when a step fails.