DEV Community: Sanidhya Goel

5 Steps on How to not loose at a hackathon?

Sanidhya Goel — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 10:47:46 +0000

In 1999, ten developers gathered to work on cryptographic frameworks, IPv6, and IPsec for OpenBSD, in what is often considered the first-ever hackathon. Since then, the tech world has decided that the best way to encourage innovation is to put a few hundred developers in a building, deprive them of sleep, give them unlimited caffeine, and ask them to build something extraordinary in 24 to 48 hours.

Rather surprisingly, it worked.

Hackathons have become places where people build remarkable projects, discover new technologies, make lifelong friends, and occasionally spend six hours debugging something that could have been fixed by restarting their computer.

I started participating in hackathons in my first year of college, eventually began organizing them, and today, as a Hackathon Community Manager at Major League Hacking (@mlhacks), I work with organizers and hackers across the community. Along the way, I've noticed something: some people walk away with incredible experiences but no trophies, while others spend the whole weekend obsessing over winning and miss everything else that makes hackathons worthwhile.

So, how exactly does one avoid losing at a hackathon? Here are five steps. They won't guarantee a prize, although my definition of winning might be slightly different from yours.

Step 1: Talk to People. A Radical Concept, I Know.

You arrive surrounded by hundreds of people who share your interest in building things. Naturally, the sensible move is to find a corner, put on your headphones, and avoid all of them for 36 hours.

Or perhaps not.

Hackathons bring together developers exploring new frameworks, designers who approach problems differently, first-timers discovering what an API is, and veterans who've already made every mistake you're about to make. Talk to them. Ask what they're building and why. You don't need a networking strategy; a simple conversation is usually enough.

Talk to the organizers too. They've spent months on an event you're experiencing over a weekend. And at MLH-supported events, talk to the MLH reps. We're not just there to explain rules and hand out stickers (though stickers are an extremely compelling reason to approach anyone btw). We can connect you with resources, opportunities, and people worth knowing.

You might come looking for a teammate and leave with a mentor, a future collaborator, or someone who shares your inexplicably specific interest in apps for household appliances. You won't find any of them by staring at your terminal.

Step 2: Observe. There's a Lot Happening Beyond Your Screen.

In one corner, someone's building an AI app. Across the room, a team is assembling hardware with a worrying number of exposed wires. Somewhere else, a group has just discovered that the technology they spent twelve hours integrating doesn't support the one feature their project depends on.

Watch how other teams divide work, which tools they try, and how they decide what to do when something breaks. Most importantly, pay attention to how they think. One team might build a complicated ML pipeline while another solves the same problem with simple software and clever design. Neither is automatically better, and understanding why someone chose a solution is often worth more than the solution itself.

(No, this isn't an invitation to copy someone's project or acquire their GitHub repo through questionable means.)

Walk around and attend demos. Hackathons pack enormous amounts of knowledge into small spaces, and it would be a shame to spend the weekend accessing only what's already on your laptop.

Step 3: Ask Questions. Particularly the Ones You Think Are Stupid.

There's a peculiar belief among developers that everyone else knows exactly what they're doing. They don't. Some are just better at maintaining the appearance.

Hackathons give you mentors, workshops, and experienced developers who are all there to help people build things. Use them. If you're stuck, ask. If a workshop covers something unfamiliar, ask. There's no noble reason to spend four hours debugging something someone could explain in ten minutes.

Figuring things out yourself is valuable, and getting thoroughly confused is practically a tradition in software development. But knowing when to ask for help is a skill too. And sometimes the best question isn't "How do I do this?" but "Why did you build it this way?"

Step 4: Build Something Great. Whatever That Means.

Ah, yes. The actual project. You may have noticed we're only getting to it at Step 4. This is intentional.

We've developed strange expectations about what makes a project great. Apparently it must revolutionize education, transform healthcare, end climate change, or use AI to fix an inconvenience humanity has tolerated for centuries. Preferably within 24 hours.

Solving meaningful problems is worthwhile, but not every great hackathon project needs to save the world. Sometimes it solves a small problem exceptionally well, combines existing tools in an interesting way, or, especially for beginners, is simply something you've always wanted to build.

Start with something that interests you. Great ideas often begin with "Wouldn't it be interesting if I could build something that does this?" Maybe that's computer vision, language models on physical hardware, a tool for an annoying task, or just a fun game. When you care about the idea, you'll keep going when something inevitably breaks. And something will inevitably break.

Experiment with technology. Don't just collect it. Hackathons are a great place to try unfamiliar APIs, frameworks, and hardware. But integrating a tool because it improves your project is different from integrating it because its logo looks good on a slide or MLH is giving out a prize for it. Good technical decisions aren't about using the most tools; they're about choosing the right ones.

Step 5: Collect Feedback, Not Just Stickers.

Let me be clear: stickers are important. I've been in the hackathon space for over three years, I work at MLH, and I'm obsessed with a good sticker collection.

But you should also collect feedback.

One of the biggest mistakes is guarding your project like a state secret until judging, only to discover that the feature you spent ten hours perfecting isn't useful to anyone but you. An unfortunate discovery to make three minutes before judging ends.

Share early. Explain your idea to another team, run your approach past a mentor, and show someone a prototype to see if they get it without a fifteen-minute explanation. If they don't, or they suggest something simpler, or they spot a problem you missed, that's all useful information.

And if another team is stuck on something you've solved before, help them. You're not giving away your chances of winning. Hackathons are competitions, but they're also communities, and the two can coexist just fine.

So, Did You Win?

At the end, the judges decide. Some teams win prizes. Most go home without a trophy, presumably after locating their chargers and remembering what uninterrupted sleep feels like.

But consider what you've gained. You met people you wouldn't otherwise have met, explored new technologies, and built something that didn't exist when you arrived. Maybe it worked perfectly. Maybe it worked only during the demo, an achievement deserving its own category of engineering recognition. Or maybe it didn't work at all, but now you know why and what you'd do differently.

Winning a prize is wonderful, so work hard and give the judges every reason to recognize you. Just don't make it the only measure of whether your weekend was worthwhile.

A hackathon is one of those rare competitions where you can lose the judging round and still leave with more than you arrived with.

And if you've managed that, I'd argue you've followed these five steps rather successfully.

MLH Hackathons are the best place to lean, connect and grow in the tech space. So, at your next MLH Hackathon, don't forget to follow the 5 steps and don't forget to grab some awesome stickers and swag!

Follow me on :

Follow MLH on DEV: @mlhacks + connect with us on socials :

And feel free to reach out to us anytime at league@mlh.io.

I built a skill that explains you, your AI Slop!

Sanidhya Goel — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 11:39:25 +0000

A problem every hackathon builder who is vibe coding has: a lot of times, the demo works; you built it with an agent over the last six hours, but you genuinely don't know what is going on under the hood.

That's why I built show-me-the-build — a Claude Code / Cursor / Codex (or any other LLM) skill that turns any codebase or cloud deployment with any agent into a self-building HTML presentation. Type one command, and it walks through what got built, why it was built that way, and how it actually runs.

Architecture Diagram of each component in the code

The part that actually matters

Anyone can generate a static architecture diagram. The interesting bit is that this one builds itself, step by step — resources or modules appear one at a time, in the order they were actually created, with the connections between them drawn live. Click any box and a drawer opens with a real one-sentence reason it exists — not an invented "reduces coupling," but the actual reason, pulled from your code or your infra docs.

It ships as one self-contained HTML file. No server, no build step. Copy it, present it, done.

Where it's actually useful

Two situations, mainly:

Hackathons and competitions. You vibe-coded for hours with an agent. Now you need thirty seconds to explain the architecture to a judge who wasn't there for any of it.
Inheriting a vibe-coded app — yours or a teammate's — where nobody's entirely sure what's actually wired to what anymore.

Deployment procedure explained

Try it

npx skills@latest add sanidhya-build/skills --skill=show-me-the-build

Or if you are lazy like me, just ask your agent the following :
Install the show-me-the-build skill via npx (npx skills@latest add sanidhya-build/skills --skill=show-me-the-build). Install the skill in this agent's global /skills folder.

Then type /show-me-the-build in your agent of choice.

Full write-up, examples, and the source are at show-me-the-build-website.vercel.app.

Follow me for more content around community and tech

We're expanding the MLH Asia-Pacific League

Sanidhya Goel — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:36:05 +0000

Hey Everyone!

At Major League Hacking (MLH), our mission is to empower student developers worldwide by providing organizers and hackers with the resources, mentorship, and support they need to build incredible tech communities. We partner directly with hackathons to guide organizers through the planning process, while connecting hackers with our partners like GitHub, Google, MongoDB, ElevenLabs, Vultr, Snowflake, and many more, to provide cutting-edge software tools, hardware, exclusive prizes, and a ton of iconic swag to take home.

We’re growing the APAC League

Over the years, we have seen some of the most innovative projects and passionate hackers emerge from the Asia Pacific (APAC). We have always loved working with our APAC events. The energy, the projects, and the sheer dedication of this region are completely unmatched. Because of that, we are incredibly excited to announce a massive update: we are officially scaling up our Asia Pacific League to support 3x our previous capacity of events in the upcoming season and beyond!

As someone who used to organize hackathons in this very region, I know exactly what goes into making these events a reality. To make sure you get in on this expansion and get the most out of an MLH partnership, I want to share one crucial piece of advice:

Plan Your Event Early & Apply for MLH Membership 3-4 Months Prior

In the APAC region, we frequently see organizers waiting until the last month to reach out. When you plan at the last minute, it limits the resources we can provide. It causes you to miss out on a huge margin of support and causes us to miss out on supporting some truly incredible events. Reaching out 3-4 months before your actual dates ensures we can build the best possible event together without the last-minute stress!

If you are ready to bring an unforgettable experience to your local hacker community, we want to hear from you. Apply to become a member event:

MLH Event Membership Application

Looking for other ways to get involved with the global hacker community?

Whether you're interested in running smaller-scale events or diving into open-source, check out Hack Days or join us during Hacktoberfest to start building with the community.

We can't wait to work with all of you and see what we build together this season. Follow us on DEV: @mlhacks + connect with us on socials :

And feel free to reach out to us anytime at league@mlh.io.

Happy Hacking!

Hey Everyone! I’m Sanidhya from MLH

Sanidhya Goel — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 03:04:14 +0000

MLH AI Roadshow Bengaluru

Hey Everyone! I am Sanidhya Goel, a new MLH Hackathon Community Manager (HCM) for Asia Pacific, and I couldn’t be more excited to expand my role on the MLH team and community!

My journey into the hacker community didn't start with me being a hacker, as it is for most people; it started with me wearing a volunteer badge.

During my second year of college, I volunteered for my campus's first-ever hackathon, Code Kshetra, organized via Geek Room. I went in just checking it out on a senior's recommendation, but I ended up witnessing something great. Beyond the impressive development work, I saw people genuinely connecting, playing games, and jamming in music sessions. It was the most fun I’d had in a long time.

That energy pushed me to jump in as a hacker. I teamed up with three classmates for Techminds Hackathon, where we built an IoT project and ended up winning! From that moment, I was completely hooked on both attending and organizing hackathons.

Interestingly, my next hackathon (Vihaan 007) was my first encounter with MLH. I saw the MLH booth, but I was so hyper-focused on building my project that I didn't even question what it was; I just grabbed my swag and went back to coding!

My perspective shifted when I became the lead of Geek Room and organized Code Kshetra 2.0. We officially registered as an MLH member event. For context, becoming an MLH Member Event means partnering directly with Major League Hacking, through which the organizers get hands-on support throughout the entire planning process, while the hackers get access to mentorship, software, prizes, swag, and exclusive event resources from our partners. I had the chance to work with Siddharth Shivkumar (my HCM at the time) and Vinayak (our MLH Coach for the event). Working with them for months to curate the best possible event made me realize the sheer potential of an MLH partnership. It opened my eyes to the fact that the hacker community is a massive, globally connected network far beyond my local well.

I knew I wanted to be part of it. I applied to be a Coach, but the timing wasn't right as MLH wasn't hiring. I spent the next year organizing over five amazing hackathons throughout 2025. Then, in November, I finally got an email from Ryan asking if I was still interested. Hell yeah, I was!

After an amazing set of interviews, where Ryan and Siddharth came to Delhi and met my incredible fellow Coaches Harshita, Romanch, Toukir, and Anjana, I officially started staffing events.

Hack Byte 4.0 with Coach Toukir and Coach Anjana

Usually, new MLH Coaches are paired with experienced staff for their first few events to learn the ropes. I had 2 events where I was paired with Siddharth to experience and learn the ropes of being an MLH Coach. And then came Electrothon 8.0; I was paired with a senior Coach who unfortunately fell ill at the last minute, making me the sudden event lead.

I won't lie, I was overwhelmed and a little hesitant. But handling the full event, running workshops, and connecting with so many passionate people all in one place, and working with the help of Paul (my Coach on call) and Alex (my MLHer on call), this ended up being the best experience of my life. It was a massive investment of time and energy, but it made me realize this is what I wanted to do.

Electrothon 8.0 (PS: The dog was a paid actor)

Up until March 2026, I had been working as a full-time software engineer at an amazing AI startup, tackling complex problems and building applications for the country's largest financial players. But in April, I just had the instinct and pulled the trigger, texted Ryan to ask about more opportunities on the team, and here I am! I officially joined the team in July after another round of interviews.

Electrothon 8.0

I can't wait to work with you all and see what we build together this season. Follow me on DEV + connect with me on LinkedIn and feel free to reach out to us anytime at league@mlh.io.

Happy Hacking!