NandaHack:
Agentic AI
Hackathon

Register with the participation form, do Phase 1, then do Phase 2 and submit your skill. Phase 1 is the warm-up: improve NANDA Town and open a pull request. Phase 2 is the main event: build a service, write a SKILL.md for it, and submit it on the NANDA Town skills page.

Two. The participation form is where you register once; it does not submit Phase 1 or Phase 2. Phase 1 is submitted as a pull request on GitHub, and Phase 2 is submitted on the NANDA Town skills page. Separately, the final Google form must be fully completed before Saturday, July 11 at 2:00 PM ET. Resubmit that final form even if you have completed it already, because there are new required fields for your final submission, and share your Phase 2 video demo in it.

The initial submission deadline is Friday, July 10, 2026 at 12:00 PM (noon) Eastern Time. It covers both phases and applies wherever you are building from. All Phase 1 (Nanda Town PR) submissions are final at that time. You can modify and continue working on your submission for Phase 2 only until Saturday, July 11 at 2:00 PM ET, which is also when your required video demo is due at the latest. The final Google form must also be fully completed before Saturday, July 11 at 2:00 PM ET.

Yes. A video demo of your Phase 2 submission is required, and you share it in the final Google form. The video will not impact your score, but it is a requirement to fully complete your submission, and if you get selected for the top 10 teams we need a video to show to people. It is due at the latest Saturday, July 11, 2026 at 2:00 PM ET.

We recommend it. Phase 1 is a short warm-up worth 20% that teaches you how NANDA Town works. Phase 2, your own service with a SKILL.md, is the main event, worth 80%. You can enter just one, but doing both gives you the best score.

Press the Start Phase 1 button above. It opens the NANDA Town README, which has the exact commands to clone the repo and run it locally. Then pick one of the 12 building blocks, improve it or add a new one, add tests, and open a pull request named hackathon/your-name-topic.

No. In Phase 2 you build a service and write a SKILL.md that describes it. Agents that already exist read your SKILL.md and call your service. You never write agent code.

It's a plain Markdown file that teaches an AI agent how to use your service: what it does, its web address, the endpoints, and how to call them. An agent reads it and then uses your service on its own, with no human help.

It's an open-source sandbox where AI agents practice talking, trusting, paying, and coordinating across 12 building blocks. In Phase 1 you improve one of those building blocks, so you learn how the town works before building your own service. Use the Explore NANDA Town button above to see it running.

Phase 1 is a pull request on the NANDA Town repo on GitHub. Phase 2 is submitted on the NANDA Town skills page: press Submit your skill above, then scroll down on that page to find the form. That page is the only place Phase 2 is submitted. Then complete the final Google form (with your video demo) before Saturday, July 11 at 2:00 PM ET.

Skill name: required. Your name or team: optional, but fill it in, since it shows on your registry card. Email: private, never shown on the site or public API. GitHub username: the bare handle, not a URL; this is how your registry entry is matched to your Phase 1 PR and registration. One line description: what the service does. Source type: a hosted link (URL to your .md), a GitHub repo (link to repo or file), or paste the file (the Markdown text). Your endpoints: one per line, method then the full live URL, for example GET https://your-app.onrender.com/weather?city={city} or POST https://your-app.onrender.com/alerts. These must be real, live URLs, because the registry checks them. Tags: comma separated, for example weather, api, demo. Then press Submit SkillMD.

Yes. The form gives you the option to make the SKILL.md file or link itself private if you would like. But the idea, description, and authorship should still be discoverable for collaboration purposes.

After a successful submit, the form shows "Saved." with your skill name and a "View its API record" link. Your card appears at the top of the list on the skills page, and the "Submitted so far" count goes up by one. To verify with curl: GET https://nandatown.projectnanda.org/api/skills returns a count and the list of skills. Find your entry, note its id, then GET https://nandatown.projectnanda.org/api/skills/<id> returns your full record. There is no confirmation email. If your entry is in that JSON, it is recorded.

The registry checks your link and shows a badge on your card: green "link responded" or red "couldn't reach link." The check is not instant, so submit, then return to the skills page until your card reads "link responded." If it reads "couldn't reach link," your host is asleep or down: open your URL yourself to wake it, confirm it answers, then submit again. There is no edit button; resubmitting is the normal way to fix an entry. Keep your service up through Saturday, July 11: judging runs that morning from 9:30 AM to noon ET to pick the top 10, and if your service is down when the judge's agent calls, the agent fails.

Yes, optionally. POST JSON to https://nandatown.projectnanda.org/api/skills with a name, a source_type of url, github, or content, a source_url (or a content field for pasted Markdown), and your endpoints. The form is still preferred because it also records your GitHub username, which the API example does not.

No. Attendance at the in-person event on Saturday, July 11 from 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM ET at MIT is not required: you can still fully participate and win by being fully virtual, as this is a fully global hackathon. If you do come, you are encouraged to use the time to finish up your Phase 2 submission; there will be a dedicated space to do that. RSVP on Luma is required to attend.

Anyone: students, builders, researchers, and professionals. You can enter on your own or as a team.