Official rules: Signs of Life

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.

2. Dates

All times are given in Pacific Time (PT) unless marked Anywhere on Earth (AoE, UTC−12).

Registration opens on publication of these rules and closes Fri Nov 20, 2026, 11:59 pm AoE.
The build period runs from Fri Nov 13, 2026, 8:00 am PT to Sun Nov 22, 2026, 11:59 pm AoE (Mon Nov 23, 2026, 3:59 am PT).
Judging runs from Mon Nov 23 to Tue Nov 24, 2026. Winners are announced on the finals stream on Tue Nov 24, 2026 at 8:00 am PT.
We may extend a deadline for everyone if our systems fail. We'll announce any extension on our X account and by email.

3. Who can enter

You must be 18 or older at registration.
You can't enter if you are a resident of, or located in, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, the Crimea region, or the so-called Donetsk or Luhansk People's Republics, or if you are on a US government sanctions or restricted-party list.
Residents of Russia and Belarus may take part but can't receive credits or prizes.
Residents of Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Colombia, and the province of Mendoza in Argentina may take part and appear on the leaderboard, but can't receive Hackathon credits or prizes, because of local contest rules.
Residents of Italy and Brazil may take part and appear on the leaderboard, but can't receive Hackathon credits or prizes, because of local prize-promotion rules. Like anyone, they can use Nenya's standard free trial.
These limits follow US sanctions law (31 CFR 560.204 and OFAC guidance), which treats services such as platform credits like any other export. We'll update this list if US sanctions change.
You don't need a paid Nenya plan to enter or win. Using Nenya is optional and earns no points. Buying anything from us does not improve your chances of winning.
Employees, contractors and directors of Durable Intelligence, its judges, and members of their immediate families and households can take part but cannot win prizes.
Teams have 1 to 4 members. Each person joins one team, and each team makes one entry.
You represent the country where you live. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you represent San Francisco. A team represents the place where most of its members live, and a tie goes to the team's choice.

4. How to enter

Register on the event page or Luma page.
Build during the build period.
Submit through the form at durableintel.com/signs-of-life/submit before the deadline, with:
- a public repository link that judges can read without special access;
- a README that explains what it is, how to run it, and which AI tools and models were used and for what;
- LIFE.md, describing one recorded run of the project, backed by logs;
- a video of 2 minutes or less, publicly viewable, in any language with English subtitles.

5. Entry requirements

New work. The project must be built during the build period. You may use existing open-source libraries, engines, models, datasets and assets, and you may use AI tools. List in the README anything you made before the build period. Your commit history should show the work happening during the build period.
Honest records. Logs, results, LIFE.md and vitals must come from real runs. Made-up or edited results, logs or claims disqualify the entry.
Safe and contained. No API keys, credentials, secrets or personal data in the repository, logs or video. Nothing that harms people, or systems outside your own environment. Self-copying or self-modifying code must stay inside a sandbox you control.
Your rights. You must have the right to use everything in your entry. No content that is illegal, hateful, sexually explicit or infringing.
We may disqualify an entry that breaks these rules, or a person who breaks the code of conduct.

6. Judging

First, a screen. Entries are checked for eligibility and completeness. An automated check may assist; a person decides every disqualification.
Second, scoring. Judges score eligible entries out of 100:
- It keeps going (25)
- It acts on its own (20)
- It changes (20)
- It surprises us (20)
- We can see it and run it (15)
No chance. Every winner is chosen by the judges against the published rubric. No stage uses a random draw. Ties go to the higher "It keeps going" score, then to a majority vote of the judges.
Finalists are chosen from the top scores and demo on the finals stream. Final placement is decided by the judges.
People's Choice. At Mon Nov 23, 2026, 11:59 pm PT, we take the five eligible entries whose single public post on X (using #SignsOfLifeHack, tagging both @Durable_Intel and @NenyaBizniz, and submitted in the form) has the most likes. The judges pick the winner from those five using the scoring above. We may disqualify likes we believe were bought or automated. Likes decide only the shortlist. The judges decide the winner. People's Choice isn't open to residents of Portugal.
Judges are the Durable Intelligence team and the guest judges we announce. Every panel that picks a winner includes at least one judge who is independent of Durable Intelligence and of the entrants. Judges' full names are listed at durableintel.com/signs-of-life. A judge with a conflict of interest sits that entry out.
Judges' decisions are final.

7. Prizes and credits

All prizes and credits are Nenya credits, usable on Durable Intelligence's Nenya platform under the Nenya terms at durableintel.com/terms. Credits have no cash value. They can't be transferred, sold or exchanged for cash, and unused credits are not refunded or paid out. A prize can be replaced only by credits of equal or greater value.

7.1 Prizes (judged)

Where prizes apply. We award prizes only where US law requires no tax withholding on them: to US citizens and residents, and to residents of the countries listed in section 7.4, whose income tax treaty with the United States exempts this kind of income from US tax. Entries from every other eligible country compete for every title, appear on the leaderboard and keep their builder allowance. If such an entry wins, the title stands and the prize credits aren't awarded. For a team, each member's share follows that member's country of residence.

Each prize's approximate retail value (ARV) is its stated dollar amount. The prize is the number of Nenya credits that amount buys on Nenya's rate card for a purchase of that size on the day we issue it. Prize credits expire 12 months after we issue them.

World Champion: $50,000 in Nenya credits (ARV $50,000).
Best of San Francisco: $25,000 in Nenya credits (ARV $25,000).
Best of [country]: $10,000 in Nenya credits (ARV $10,000) for the top entry from each eligible country with 5 or more eligible entries. It becomes $20,000 (ARV $20,000) if that country reaches 100 registered builders who claimed credits by Fri Nov 20, 2026, 11:59 pm AoE.
Longest Life, Most Surprising, Best Death and People's Choice: $10,000 in Nenya credits each (ARV $10,000 each).
Specimen of the Day: $500 in Nenya credits (ARV $500), one a day from Nov 13 to Nov 22, 2026, chosen by the judges from that day's eligible public posts on X (labelled #ad, using #SignsOfLifeHack and tagging both @Durable_Intel and @NenyaBizniz), as the post that best shows a living project at work, judged on the "It keeps going", "It acts on its own" and "It changes" criteria in section 6.
Total ARV: $120,000, plus $10,000 or $20,000 for each eligible country's Best-of prize.
One prize per entry. An entry can win one of the prizes above, except that Best of [country], People's Choice and Specimen of the Day can stack with any other prize.
Team prizes are split equally among the team's members unless the team tells us otherwise in writing. Each member's share is that member's prize.
Investor introductions. For the World Champion and each finalist team, Jacob Schoenberg sends a written introduction to at least three San Francisco–based investors he selects. Whether a meeting or investment follows is entirely up to the investors, and no funding is promised.

7.2 Builder allowance (not a prize)

The builder allowance is an extended version of the free trial every Nenya account gets. It doesn't depend on judging or on anything beyond registering and claiming.

$1,000 for each registered builder who claims it.
+$500 for a new builder who registers through another builder's referral link and claims.
+$250 for every claimed builder from a country that reaches 50 claimed builders.
Builder allowance credits expire on Feb 28, 2027.

7.3 Earned credits

+$500 to the referrer for each new builder who registers through their referral link and claims.
+$100 for each public progress post on X that uses #SignsOfLifeHack and tags both @Durable_Intel and @NenyaBizniz, up to 5 per builder. Posts without the hashtag and both tags don't count. Posts that earn credits are advertising for Nenya. Label each one as an ad, for example by starting it with #ad (in French, "Publicité" or "Collaboration commerciale"). Posts without a visible label don't earn credits.
Captain bonus: +$2,500 to every builder whose referral link brings 20 or more claimed builders from their own country. The builder with the most in each country is that country's Country Captain.
Earned credits expire 12 months after we issue them.
Before your earned credits pass $1,500 in total, we'll ask for a tax form (section 8). We hold further earned credits until we have it.

7.4 Countries where prizes apply

The United States, and: Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. Italy's treaty would qualify, but Italy is excluded under section 3. For any other country, prizes apply only if we confirm before the finals that its income tax treaty with the United States exempts prize income. We check each winner's treaty claim when they're notified.

We may refuse or revoke credits obtained through fake, duplicate or automated accounts.

8. Winners and taxes

We notify winners by email within 3 days after the finals. A winner must reply within 7 days.
Before we issue a prize, each winning team member confirms eligibility and gives us a valid tax form: IRS Form W-9 for US citizens and residents, and IRS Form W-8BEN for everyone else, including any tax-treaty claim. We issue prizes only after we have these forms.
Prizes are taxable income in the United States and in many other countries. We report prizes as US law requires, for example on IRS Form 1099 or Form 1042-S, at their ARV.
A winner outside the United States claims the treaty exemption on Form W-8BEN (Part II). Without a valid claim, the prize isn't awarded (section 7.1).
A winner may decline a prize in writing before we issue it.
Winners are responsible for reporting and paying all taxes on their prizes and credits where they live (national, state, provincial and local), for any fees, and for reporting the prize to their own government where required.
We issue each prize within 30 days after we receive that winner's eligibility confirmation and tax form.
We publish the list of winners at durableintel.com/signs-of-life within 10 business days after the finals.
Durable Intelligence doesn't withhold or pay tax outside the United States on prizes or credits. Each winner reports and pays any tax due where they live, including Dutch kansspelbelasting where it applies.
If a winner is ineligible, doesn't reply within 7 days, or doesn't send the forms within 30 days of our request, we may award the prize to the next-highest eligible entry.

9. Ownership and publicity

You keep all rights to your project.
By entering, you give Durable Intelligence a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to display your project name, team names, video, screenshots, README excerpts and vitals data, to promote the Hackathon and its results. This includes on durableintel.com and our social channels.
We don't claim any other rights in your work.

10. Privacy

We use registration and submission data to run the Hackathon, issue credits, contact you about it, and (only if you opt in) tell you about Nenya or research roles.
We don't sell your data.
Public leaderboards show counts by country and the display names of people who opt in.

11. Conduct

Be decent. Harassment, hate, spam and cheating aren't allowed in any Hackathon space, including our X threads and Spaces, the streams and other social threads.
Report problems to humans@durableintel.com.
We may remove anyone who breaks this.

12. General

Changes. We may change these rules to fix errors or respond to circumstances, and we'll announce any change.
Cancellation. We may cancel or suspend the Hackathon if something outside our control prevents fair play.
Liability. To the extent the law allows, Durable Intelligence isn't liable for losses arising from taking part, and taking part is at your own risk.
Void where prohibited. Prizes and credits are void where prohibited or restricted by law.
Languages. These rules are also published in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek and Polish. If a translation differs from this English version, the English version governs, except where local law requires otherwise.
Currency. All amounts in these rules are in US dollars.
Your local rights. Nothing in these rules limits rights the law of your country of residence gives you.
Governing law. These rules are governed by the laws of the State of California.

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Signs of Life: Official Rules

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