Judging shouldn’t be the messiest part of your hackathon.
OpenRubric imports submissions, keeps every judge on the same rubric, and gives organizers a clear path from final demos to verified winners.
- Devpost or CSV import
- One weighted rubric
- GitHub timeline review
- CSV export after every round
A triage assistant for rural clinics that routes patient intake photos to the right specialist. Built on a fine-tuned vision model with an offline-first PWA front end.
Your judging room, handled
Pilot events are set up by us. You bring the rubric and the submissions link, we do the configuration and stay on call while judging runs.
- Step 1
We configure your rubric and import submissions.
Send us your rubric and your Devpost URL or CSV. We set up criteria, weights, tracks, and every project before judging opens.
- Step 2
Judges receive a simple scoring workspace.
Each judge gets one link, a search box, and the rubric. Scores autosave, and no judge can overwrite another judge's record.
- Step 3
Organizers monitor progress and review timeline signals.
You see which judges have finished, which projects still need scores, and any GitHub timeline questions worth asking a team.
- Step 4
OpenRubric calculates rankings and exports a complete backup.
Weighted totals per track and overall, plus a CSV of submissions, scores, and rankings you keep after the event.
Three things that decide whether judging goes smoothly.
One shared weighted rubric
You define the criteria and the weights once. Every judge scores the same way, on the same scale, with a comment box on each line.
Judges keep independent records, so nobody overwrites anyone. Scores autosave while judges work, which matters when a laptop dies twenty minutes before awards.
- Innovation18/20
- Technical complexity22/25
- Functionality17/20
- Design and UX13/15
- Impact9/10
- Presentation8/10
GitHub timeline review for organizers
OpenRubric reads each project’s public commit history and points out things worth asking about: work that predates the event, commits after the deadline, or a repo with no usable history.
These are questions for organizers, not verdicts. You decide what they mean, and a project with an unresolved high-priority question stays out of the winners list until a human resolves it.
- All commits inside the event windowClean timeline
- Nine commits before the event startedLight review
- Activity after the submission deadlineNeeds review
- No usable commit history foundHigh priority
Every signal is a question for an organizer, not a verdict. OpenRubric never deducts points and never decides that a team broke a rule.
Rankings with exportable backups
Judge scores aggregate into weighted totals per track and overall. Every number traces back to a criterion and the judge who entered it, so you can answer a question from a team on the spot.
Export submissions, scores, and rankings as CSV at any point during judging, not just at the end. If anything goes wrong, you still have the numbers.
| # | Project | Track | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lighthouse | Health AI | 87.3 |
| 2 | MediScan | Health AI | 83.0 |
| 3 | CampusLoop | Health AI | 79.5 |
| 4 | StudyForge | Health AI | 76.1 |
OpenRubric is onboarding its first pilot hackathons.
The product is young and we are honest about that. It is why pilot events are run with us in the room rather than handed over as a login and a wish of luck.
If a pilot event is a fit, here is exactly what you get.
- Managed setup before your event
- Judge onboarding and a walkthrough for your team
- Live support during judging
- CSV backup of submissions, scores, and rankings
Become an OpenRubric partner event
An in-kind sponsorship. We run your judging operation at no cost to the event, and you list us as the judging technology behind it.
- Event setup
- Devpost or CSV import
- Weighted rubric configuration
- Judge onboarding
- Live judging support
- Rankings and CSV export
- “Official Judging Technology Partner” recognition
- Logo placement on your sponsor page
- A brief opening or awards ceremony mention
- Permission for an anonymized case study
- A short testimonial only if the event goes well
Does OpenRubric replace Devpost?
No. Devpost stays where teams submit. OpenRubric imports those submissions and handles the part Devpost is not built for: one weighted rubric, judge assignment, live scoring, timeline review, and final rankings. If you do not use Devpost, a CSV import works the same way.
Does AI choose the winners?
No. Judges enter every score and organizers publish every award. AI is used only to draft a short project summary so a judge has context faster. You can turn it off, and nothing in the ranking math reads it.
What happens if something fails during judging?
Scores autosave as judges work, and you can export a CSV of submissions, scores, and rankings at any moment, so a full backup is always one click away. During a pilot we are reachable throughout your judging window. If the app were unavailable, your exported CSV still contains everything needed to finish scoring by hand.
Can we customize our rubric and award categories?
Yes. You set the criteria, the point weights, and the tracks. Rankings are calculated per track and overall, so category awards and a grand prize come out of the same scoring pass.
What does the pilot cost?
The first managed partner event is free. It is an in-kind sponsorship: we run your judging operation and you list OpenRubric as your judging technology partner. After that, managed events are a flat $50 to $100 per event, which covers the AI credits and the support time. See pricing for the details.
What information do you need from our organizers?
Your rubric, your track or category list, your Devpost URL or a CSV of submissions, the names and emails of your judges, and your judging window with its time zone. That is enough for us to have the event configured before judges arrive.
Let’s get your judging room ready.
Tell us your event dates, your rubric, and how many submissions you expect. We will tell you honestly whether OpenRubric is a fit.