{"slug": "show-hn-i-built-a-one-prompt-hackathon-platform-free-entry-sponsored-prizes", "title": "Show HN: I built a one-prompt hackathon platform, free entry, sponsored prizes", "summary": "A new hackathon platform, the One Shot Challenge, launches on July 13, 2026, allowing participants to build apps, games, or worlds from a single AI prompt. Sponsored prizes are awarded by a jury from Lionsgate AI, Sony, the NBA, and World Labs, with free entry and free API credits from providers like Muse Spark and Gemini.", "body_md": "# One prompt.\n\n*One shot.*\n\nBoil down your creativity and vision into your best shot.\n\nRound 01\n\n**Jul 13 – Jul 18**, 2026 · winners **Jul 19**\n\nOne prompt in, something spectacular out. Build a whole game, a living world, a toy that feels impossible. The more complex, rich and deep, the better.\n\nA year ago this was impossible.\n\nThe newest models, like Fable 5, Opus 4.8, GPT-4.6 Sol, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Grok 4.5, GLM 5.2, DeepSeek V4, Seed 2.1 Pro, Qwen3.7 Max, Kimi K2.6, Muse Spark 1.1\n\nbuild entire apps, games and worlds from a single prompt. No scaffolding. No back and forth. You describe it once, and a working thing comes out.\n\nThe One Shot Challenge puts that to the test: how far can you and your model get in a single shot?\n\n## 01The prizes\n\n## 02How it works\n\n- 01\n### Write one prompt\n\nOne prompt, as long as you want. It is your whole entry.\n\n- 02\n### Bring your best model\n\nAny provider, your own key. No key? Muse Spark ($20 free) and Gemini give you a frontier model; Groq and NVIDIA hand out free keys too.\n\n- 03\n### Confirm your email\n\nClick the link we send. Nothing runs until you do.\n\n- 04\n### It runs once\n\nOne model call. No edits, no retries. Broken still counts.\n\n- 05\n### It ships, sealed\n\nInto the gallery, prompt and model hidden until results.\n\n- 06\n### 6 winners\n\nFive picked by a jury (Lionsgate AI, Sony, the NBA, World Labs), one by your community vote.\n\n## 03Under the hood\n\nNo black box. We run your prompt on our own server for one reason: so every entry is a provable single prompt and single model call, with no edits or retries. Your API key is encrypted, used for exactly one call, then destroyed, never stored with your entry. The result is published in a locked-down sandbox with a hash anyone can verify. Every entry is untrusted code, so it runs walled off and isolated: it can't reach our servers, your data, or any other entry.\n\n## 04The rules\n\n- Runs July 13–18. One entry per day, per email: 6 shots total.\n- Prompts and models stay sealed until the results.\n- A jury of AI leaders from Lionsgate AI, Sony, the NBA and World Labs picks 5 of the 6 winners at the Worlds in Action Hack at SIGGRAPH LA on July 19. The 6th is the community favorite, decided by your votes.\n- Anything goes. 3D worlds, games, toys, sandboxes and experiments are encouraged.\n- Your entry must be the self-contained output of your one prompt. Libraries (three.js and the like) from the approved CDNs are fine, but loading your own external or mutable code bundle, so you can keep editing it after submission, is grounds for disqualification.\n- Use only assets, code and fonts you are licensed to use. Free and open sources, like the CC0 textures and models on Poly Haven, are perfect. Here’s\n[how to load assets from the CDNs](/assets).\n\nThe challenge, live\n\n## 05Latest entries\n\n[See all 14 →](/entries)\n\n## 06Questions\n\n## Is it free to compete?\n\n[Muse Spark](https://dev.meta.ai)gives every new account $20 in free credits, plenty for many one-shot runs on a strong frontier coding model (US-only for now). Anywhere else, use\n\n[Google Gemini](https://aistudio.google.com/apikey)’s free tier, a frontier model too (rate-limited, but plenty for one shot a day). Or grab a free key from\n\n[Groq](https://console.groq.com/keys)or\n\n[NVIDIA](https://build.nvidia.com/settings/api-keys), which run open-source models, so tougher odds but a great prompt can still win.\n\n## Enter my API key? Are you CRAZY!?\n\nWhy run it on our side at all, instead of letting you paste in a result? Integrity. This is a\n\n**one prompt** challenge, so every entry has to be a provable single prompt and single model call, with no edits, retries, or chaining. Running it on our server with your key is what guarantees that, and lets us publish a hash of your prompt plus the exact output so anyone can verify it. If everyone ran it themselves and pasted results, there would be no way to keep it fair. And our server is locked down: no open public ports, reachable only through a Cloudflare Tunnel.\n\n## How are entries judged?\n\n**creativity, depth, aesthetics, and functionality** are some of the things that will be considered. A jury of AI leaders picks 5 of the 6 winners; the 6th is the community favorite, decided by your likes.\n\n## Can I use images, 3D models, or fonts?\n\n[how to load assets from the CDNs](/assets).\n\n## Do you add anything to my prompt?\n\n[submit form](/submit)and on the\n\n[architecture page](/architecture).\n\n## Will there be more rounds?\n\n## What can I build?\n\n## Why only one file, no backend?\n\n## What does “one shot” actually mean?\n\n## When are the prompts and models revealed?\n\nAre you and your model a tight team?\n\n6 days. One shot a day. Free to enter.\n\n[Prove yourself](/submit)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-i-built-a-one-prompt-hackathon-platform-free-entry-sponsored-prizes", "canonical_source": "https://1shotchallenge.ai", "published_at": "2026-07-13 22:14:12+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-13 22:35:56.369967+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "ai-tools", "generative-ai", "ai-startups"], "entities": ["Lionsgate AI", "Sony", "NBA", "World Labs", "Muse Spark", "Gemini", "Groq", "NVIDIA"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-i-built-a-one-prompt-hackathon-platform-free-entry-sponsored-prizes", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-i-built-a-one-prompt-hackathon-platform-free-entry-sponsored-prizes.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-i-built-a-one-prompt-hackathon-platform-free-entry-sponsored-prizes.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-i-built-a-one-prompt-hackathon-platform-free-entry-sponsored-prizes.jsonld"}}