CrafterWIKI

Know why hackathon projects win before you pick your idea.

CrafterWIKI is an open, provenance-first wiki of hackathons: the winners and what everyone else built, each project tagged by the mechanisms that made it stand out and the judging lenses it played to. A demo-first planning harness turns that evidence into a plan for your next event: recon → patterns → angles → judge panel → demo script → then architecture.

Live website: crafterwiki.com. 14 events, 36 analyzed projects and 88 additional roster entries. The site includes video previews, original resource links, event/year/placement filters and a downloadable builder brief. CLI, MCP server, static API and the existing Claude Code plugin remain available.

Next coverage work: project and media acquisition plan.

Surfaces

Surface	Where	Start
Web wiki	web/ (Astro, static)	npm install then npm run dev inside web/
CLI	cli/crafterwiki.mjs	node cli/crafterwiki.mjs --help
MCP server	mcp/server.mjs (stdio, zero dependencies)	claude mcp add crafterwiki -- node <repo>/mcp/server.mjs
Static API	crafterwiki build → api/v0/*.json	also served by the web build at /api/v0/
Claude Code plugin	repo root: /hack-plan, 4 skills, 4 agents, MCP server	claude --plugin-dir <repo>

Quick start

Requires Node ≥ 20 (the web site needs Node ≥ 22.12). The CLI and MCP server have no install step.

node cli/crafterwiki.mjs validate

node cli/crafterwiki.mjs event nasa-space-apps-2026

node cli/crafterwiki.mjs similar --mechanism expert-data-for-everyone --lens scientific-validity

node cli/crafterwiki.mjs patterns --event-kind student-major-league

node --test

Every CLI command supports --json.

A real harness run

For a general builder workflow, start with the builder harness plan and runbook. It supports independent projects and any hackathon through editable local workspaces:

node cli/crafterwiki.mjs plan my-build --mode project
node cli/crafterwiki.mjs plan my-event --mode hackathon --event hack-the-north-2025

Open builder-runs/<slug>/README.md. Runs are gitignored and existing directories are never overwritten. With --event, the brief and references are compiled from the corpus: organizer rules and weights with sources, the same-kind prior with ranges, and the nearest winners. Gate decisions stay with the team.

hack-plan/nasa-space-apps-2026/ is the /hack-plan output for NASA Space Apps 2026 (14–15 Nov 2026), also rendered at /plans/nasa-space-apps-2026/ on the site. The five-minute product demo is scripted in docs/DEMO.md.

Repository map

Path	What
schema/taxonomy.json	Controlled vocabularies: placement, basis, domains, mechanisms, lenses, AI patterns, event kinds…
data/hackathons/	Events with rubric, judges, prizes, tracks, timeline and roster entries
data/projects/<event>/	Analyzed projects with basis-labelled “why it stood out”
data/leads/	Unverified leads and coverage targets
cli/query.mjs	Pure validation and query logic, shared by CLI, MCP server and browser
cli/lib.mjs, cli/crafterwiki.mjs	Corpus loading, static build, CLI
mcp/	MCP tool handler and stdio server
web/	Astro site
test/	node --test suites (library, MCP)
.claude-plugin/, commands/, agents/, skills/	Harness plugin
hack-plan/	Harness runs
docs/	PRD, plan, architecture, ADRs, research, demo script

Principles

1. Primary sources only; other indexes are pointers.
2. Placement status and analysis basis on every claim — no fake podiums.
3. Winners and rosters, and base rates only from full rosters.
4. Demo before architecture.
5. Public by default; consent-gated material never enters the tracked tree (private/ is gitignored).

Is this accurate?

Every record names its sources and labels each claim as organizer-stated, team-stated or curator-inference, so you can check it. Where results are unverified the record says so, and where a roster is incomplete the tooling refuses to present counts as base rates. It is still a small, hand-tagged corpus: 35 confirmed winners across four kinds of event, and the pattern claims say so every time.

The harness's own advice has been tested once against winners it had never seen (holdout): the event-kind patterns partly held, the recommended idea shape did not, and the plan changed as a result.

Contributing

Corrections, new events and new projects are all welcome — start with CONTRIBUTING.md for the sourcing rules (primary sources only, placement honesty, team size instead of names). Please also read the code of conduct.

Corrections and removal

If a record about your project is wrong, or you want it taken down, open an issue with the "Correction or removal request" template — removal is honored on request, no justification needed. Prefer to ask privately? Open a security advisory. Details in SECURITY.md.

Licenses

• Code (cli/, mcp/, web/, test/, skills/, agents/, commands/) — MIT, see LICENSE.
• Corpus (data/, schema/, and the same data served through the API and MCP server) — CC BY 4.0, see LICENSE-DATA. Credit as: Hackathon data from CrafterWIKI (https://github.com/RikepilB/crafterwiki), CC BY 4.0.

Linked write-ups, images and videos belong to the teams and organizers who made them; this project links and paraphrases rather than republishing them.