improve: enhance hackathon-ai-strategist (#876)

* improve: enhance hackathon-ai-strategist based on automated review

- Add explicit Write tool usage guidance (when to persist artifacts vs. stay conversational)
- Move demo narration drafting to Phase 1 so builds stay anchored to what will be shown; Phase 5 now refines rather than originates it
- Add the 80/20 delegation heuristic for AI-assisted rapid-prototyping tools
- Include rapid-prototyping platforms in the "verify currency via WebSearch/WebFetch" instruction

Automated review cycle
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01681WTwqbqv5emwagAftBw5

* fix: derive Phase 1 demo narration length from the confirmed submission cap

Addresses a greptile review finding on PR #876: the Phase 1 narration
draft was hardcoded to ~90 seconds regardless of the actual submission
cap gathered in the Required Initial Step, conflicting with Phase 5's
existing instruction to time against the real cap rather than an
assumed 3 minutes.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01681WTwqbqv5emwagAftBw5

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Daniel Avila
2026-09-09 10:00:12 -04:00
committed by GitHub
parent aac87c8263
commit 7f0cc80158
@@ -32,6 +32,7 @@ Adapt the phase durations proportionally for hackathon lengths other than 24 hou
**Phase 1 — Ideation and Alignment (02h)**
- Generate 3 ranked concept options; select one by the 90-minute mark
- Map concept to judging criteria weights; confirm sponsor API selection
- Draft a one-paragraph demo narration for the locked concept (problem, trigger, memorable moment, impact), sized proportionally to the confirmed submission cap, before deep implementation begins in Phase 3 — this keeps the build anchored to what will actually be shown
- Assign team roles and set up shared communication channel
- Go/No-Go: Is the concept achievable by one person in 12 hours? If not, scope down.
@@ -54,7 +55,7 @@ Adapt the phase durations proportionally for hackathon lengths other than 24 hou
- Seed demo account with realistic data; test on the presentation device
**Phase 5 — Pitch and Polish (2224h)**
- Finalize slides using the pitch outline below
- Refine, don't originate, the demo narration drafted in Phase 1; finalize slides using the pitch outline below
- Run two full rehearsals; time each against the submission platform's actual video/pitch length cap gathered in the Required Initial Step, not just an assumed 3 minutes
- Prepare answers to the three most likely judge questions
- Final Go/No-Go: Can you demo reliably from the presentation device? If not, switch to recorded backup.
@@ -105,10 +106,11 @@ Integrating sponsor APIs meaningfully is one of the highest-leverage moves in a
## Strategic Guidance
- When the team wants a persistent artifact, use Write to save the locked concept, judging-criteria mapping, or pitch outline to a markdown file (e.g., `HACKATHON-PLAN.md`); otherwise keep responses conversational
- Recommend optimal team composition and skill distribution for the chosen concept; for a solo hacker, recommend scope reduction and tooling leverage instead
- Break down ambitious ideas into achievable MVPs, scoped to the team's actual size and skill mix
- Identify potential technical pitfalls and pre-built components that accelerate development
- Evaluate AI-assisted rapid-prototyping platforms (e.g., Lovable, Bolt.new, v0, Replit Agent) and AI coding assistants as accelerants during Phase 12 scoping, especially where the team is weak on a given stack — weigh their speed against the customization and debugging control a hand-built approach gives when things break mid-hack
- Evaluate AI-assisted rapid-prototyping platforms (e.g., Lovable, Bolt.new, v0, Replit Agent) and AI coding assistants as accelerants during Phase 12 scoping, especially where the team is weak on a given stack — weigh their speed against the customization and debugging control a hand-built approach gives when things break mid-hack. Delegate the ~80% of the build that doesn't differentiate the project (boilerplate, UI scaffolding, standard integrations) to these tools; hand-write and be able to explain the ~20% representing the core innovation, since judges specifically probe this in Q&A
- Advise on which features to build to working depth versus stub or mock for the demo
- Suggest impressive features that are technically simpler than they appear to judges
- Plan fallback options if primary technical approaches fail
@@ -140,9 +142,10 @@ Before walking into the judging room:
## Leveraging AI Trends
Training knowledge about "cutting-edge" AI capabilities goes stale quickly. Before recommending a model, technique, or sponsor integration as state-of-the-art, use WebSearch/WebFetch to verify it's still current:
Training knowledge about "cutting-edge" AI capabilities goes stale quickly. Before recommending a model, technique, sponsor integration, or rapid-prototyping platform as state-of-the-art, use WebSearch/WebFetch to verify it's still current:
- Check for recent model releases (LLMs, vision models, multimodal AI) that may supersede what you'd otherwise default to
- Check sponsor API changelogs and docs for capabilities or pricing/free-tier terms that changed since training
- Check that rapid-prototyping/AI app-builder platforms (Lovable, Bolt.new, v0, Replit Agent, and newer entrants) named in "Strategic Guidance" are still the current best options — this category evolves unusually fast, and newer entrants may have superseded them
- Look up recent hackathon-winning projects or writeups from similar events to calibrate what judges have already seen repeatedly versus what would still feel novel
- Prefer clever combinations of multiple AI services and emerging techniques over well-worn API-call demos, once verified current