Rules & Code of Conduct

1. Eligibility & Teams

Who can participate?

  • A team may have multiple members, but one leader should be designated for communication and submissions.
  • Students may only compete on one team per contest.

Team size & collaboration

  • Recommended team size: 2–8 students (solo teams are allowed but not required).
  • Collaboration within a registered team is fully allowed and encouraged.
  • Collaboration or solution-sharing between different teams is not allowed.

2. Use of AI & External Tools

AI is ALLOWED

  • You may use AI tools (e.g., coding assistants, LLMs) to help brainstorm ideas, debug code, and improve implementation.
  • You are still responsible for understanding the methods you submit; judges may ask for short explanations of your approach.
  • Blindly pasting AI-generated code without understanding it is discouraged and may hurt your performance more than it helps.

Other external resources

  • You may use standard libraries, open-source tools, textbooks, and online references for algorithms and data structures.
  • You may not use pre-existing full solutions to the same problem (if you somehow find one, you must not use it).
  • Using paid/private optimization services that directly search on the contest dataset on your behalf is not allowed.

3. Solution Sharing & Integrity

No sharing solutions between teams

  • No sharing of code, tuned parameters, or full approaches between different teams, schools, or clubs.
  • Do not publish your full solution, code, or tuned model publicly before results are officially released.
  • High-level discussion (e.g., “we used simulated annealing”) is okay after the contest, but not during the active contest window.

Academic honesty

  • All code submitted must be written or meaningfully modified by your team.
  • Any deliberate plagiarism or copying another team’s solution will result in disqualification.
  • If you are inspired by an idea (paper, blog, etc.), that’s fine — but the implementation must be your own.

4. Submissions & Leaderboard

Submissions

  • Teams may submit multiple times; only the last non-CE (Compile Error) Solution will be used for judging.
  • Submissions must follow the specified format (e.g., output file format, interface, or API) described in the problem statement.
  • All submissions must run within the published time and memory limits on the official judging environment.

Leaderboard behavior

  • Do not intentionally spam submissions to overload the judge or probe for vulnerabilities.
  • Do not attempt to exploit bugs, tamper with the judging system, or attack other teams’ submissions.
  • The organizers reserve the right to re-run submissions, adjust scores, or fix bugs in the judging environment if needed.

5. Data & Environment

Contest data

  • The official dataset, scoring function, and problem statement may not be redistributed as your own contest without permission.
  • You may build any additional internal tools or synthetic data you like, as long as they are created by your team.

Fair use of infrastructure

  • Do not attempt to disrupt the contest infrastructure, judging servers, or website.
  • Any attempt to gain unauthorized access to internal systems will result in immediate disqualification.

6. Conduct & Communication

Respectful participation

  • Participants should remain respectful in all communication channels (email, forums, etc.).
  • No harassment, hate speech, or discriminatory behavior of any kind is tolerated.

Questions & clarifications

  • Official clarifications will be posted by the organizers if a problem statement needs to be corrected or clarified.
  • If you believe you found a bug in the statement or judging, contact the organizers privately instead of exploiting it.

7. Enforcement

Organizer discretion

  • The organizers reserve the right to investigate suspicious submissions or behavior.
  • Penalties may include score adjustment, removal from the leaderboard, or disqualification.
  • In edge cases not covered by these rules, the organizers’ judgment is final.