I Built the Platform That Judges Hackathons in 72 Hours. The Hardest Bugs Were About Evidence, Not Features.

Description and use

Verdict Ledger reliably evaluates hackathon projects, ensuring judge isolation, audit integrity, and timely result publication.

Problem

Ensuring that a hackathon judging platform reliably reports final rankings and evidence after a 72‑hour event, while preventing judges from accessing each other’s scores and protecting audit logs.

Outcome

Verdict Ledger meets all specified requirements, with 100% test coverage for critical paths and a proven isolation matrix. The platform can be self‑hosted by organizers and reliably publishes rankings without stale data.

Workflow

• Define roles and permissions
• Implement single‑process Flask architecture
• Create deterministic judge assignment
• Implement normalization with freshness gate
• Hash‑chain audit logs
• Enforce server‑side deadlines
• Write 273 unit tests and 43 access‑matrix tests
• Run official checker (7/7 PASS)
• Publish final ranking

Evidence

273 tests pass, none skipped, in about 90 seconds, with only the standard library's unittest.

Source

A judge must never see another judge's scores. If this only works because the UI hides a button, it does not work.

Source

Hash‑chained audit log

Source