CODEXHACKATHON

Every team passes six checks before the main day. All pass or fail, none scored.

• Every member is currently enrolled as a university student, in Thailand or overseas.
• Team size is 1 to 5. No nationality restriction. A Thai member is highly recommended for local context.
• All members share a working language, Thai or English.
• Registration complete before the deadline.
• Nobody is on more than one team.

Solo matching uses what you tell us at registration: strongest area (technical, research, design, business, pitching), coding confidence, hackathon experience, and what you want from the hackathon. We spread skills and experience across teams and group people with similar goals.

Building with Codex, Friday 27 November, 19:00 to 20:00, online, run by OpenAI engineers. Codex set up on a team repository, prompting for scoped changes, reviewing and testing generated code, data and API glue. You leave with Codex running on your own repository and one feature shipped through it.

Pitch and demo, Saturday 15:30 to 16:00. Deck structure mapped to the judging criteria, demoing a partly built product honestly, the thirty-second problem statement, handling questions. You leave with a deck skeleton and a written five-minute demo script.

Mentors take fifteen-minute drop-ins per team from 13:30 to 15:30 on Saturday, in person or online. Booking opens at 13:00 through the QR code in the Mentors section.

The hackathon asks three things of every team: identify a real problem in Thailand, build a practical solution using Codex, and show how it could create impact beyond the competition.

Smart Cities and Global Connectivity

Pick one of two sub-challenges:

• Market Entry and Business Connectivity. Local market insight, finding opportunities, market expansion, and matching global businesses with Thai companies, partners and organisations.
• Smart Urban Services. Transport, mobility, energy, waste management and public services.

Out of scope: solutions that need large-scale hardware or city-level infrastructure, and generic business tools with no clear link to urban innovation or business opportunities in Thailand.
Difficulty: medium to high. May involve AI matching, market intelligence, geospatial analysis or data integration. Must work as a prototype demo.
Track partners: AIS and Techsauce.

Financial Inclusion

In scope: access to credit, savings and insurance for informal workers, small businesses and unbanked households; financial literacy; debt and cash-flow management; tools for community lenders and cooperatives.
Out of scope: trading or investment apps for retail investors, crypto, and products for people banks already serve well.
Difficulty: medium. Light engineering, heavy domain research. You need to show you understand real borrower behaviour and interest mechanics.
Track partner: ARISE.

Health and Wellness

In scope: health, wellbeing and longevity through three areas. Molecule (food, nutrition and lifestyle), Movement (physical activity, sport and mobility), and Music and Sound (sleep, mood, mental wellbeing and relaxation).
Out of scope: anything that issues a diagnosis or treatment as a medical authority, or that depends on clinical data or regulatory approval to function.
Difficulty: entry level. Buildable with AI-assisted development and no coding background. Winning here comes down to impact and originality.
Track partner: SeaBridge.

Stage one is the eligibility check, pass or fail, listed under Requirements. Stage two is the scored judging below. Each criterion is marked 1 to 10 and carries 20% of the total.

• Real-world impact. Potential to address a meaningful problem; relevance to the chosen problem statement; clearly identified users or beneficiaries; potential for adoption, scalability and long-term value; potential financial or economic impact.
• Innovation and creativity. Originality of the core idea; creativity of the approach; a fresh perspective on an existing challenge; how effectively technology or other resources are used in a new way.
• Use of Codex. Effectiveness and practicality of Codex in the development process: coding workflows, developer tasks, iteration, debugging, testing and other technical or technical-adjacent work.
• Technical implementation. Quality and structure of the implementation; technical difficulty; functionality and completeness; code quality and architecture; evidence of meaningful technical development.
• Pitch and communication. Clarity and structure of the pitch; quality of the demo and supporting materials; ability to explain the problem and solution; responsiveness to judges' questions; overall professionalism.

Score bands. 9 to 10 outstanding, exceptional with very limited weaknesses. 7 to 8 strong, clear quality with some room to improve. 5 to 6 good, meets expectations with notable gaps. 3 to 4 fair, partially meets expectations. 1 to 2 needs improvement.

Submission. Each team submits a pitch deck and a repository by 17:30 on Saturday covering: problem statement, target users, proposed solution, working prototype, use of Codex, potential impact, scalability.

Three groups support the teams. Track experts give the ten-minute briefings on Saturday morning and share insight into each challenge area. Mentors, in person or online, take fifteen-minute drop-ins per team from 13:30 to 15:30. Judges evaluate from technical and industry perspectives and deliberate during the demo fair.

Names, roles and photos are published here in November. Mentor booking opens at 13:00 on Saturday, 30 minutes before drop-ins start, through the QR code above.

Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ. The hackathon on Saturday 28 November is in Skempton 164, in the Skempton Building. The Friday 27 November kick-off and Codex workshop are online, with the link sent to registered participants. Directions are emailed before Saturday.

Nearest tube: South Kensington (District, Circle, Piccadilly), about eight minutes on foot via the subway under Exhibition Road. Gloucester Road is a similar walk. Buses 9, 14, 49, 52, 70, 74, 345, 360, 414, 430 and C1 stop on or near Exhibition Road.