A 48-hour hackathon plan
Spend the first three hours on scope and a clickable skeleton, build the core flow until about hour 30, freeze features at hour 36, and keep the last 12 hours for polish, deployment and the demo. Teams usually lose by building too much.
Hours 0 to 3: scope
- Write one sentence: who has what problem and what your project does about it.
- List features, then cut to the one flow a judge will see.
- Agree on stack and who owns what. Use tools everyone already knows.
Hours 3 to 30: build the core flow end to end
Get a thin version working from input to result first, even if it is ugly. Add depth after the whole path works. Commit often and deploy early so deployment surprises appear on day one.
Hour 36: feature freeze
After this, only fix bugs and polish. Cut anything half-working. A smaller demo that never fails beats a bigger one that sometimes does.
Hours 36 to 48: polish and present
- Record a backup video of the demo.
- Write the README and submission text while the team still has energy.
- Rehearse the demo twice with a timer.
- Sleep at least a few hours if you can; tired teams demo badly.
What to cut first when behind
- Settings pages and account management
- Edge-case handling that the demo will not touch
- Second and third integrations
- Animations