Hacker Guide

Everything you need to build, ship, and present at LotusHack 2026 — from setup to demo day.

Getting Started

First steps when the hack begins — environment, team, and idea.

AI & LLM Integration

How to wire up AI models — from OpenAI to open-source.

Voice, Video & Media

Add real-time communication and voice AI to your project.

Backend & Data

Databases, cloud infra, and data pipelines.

No-Code & Rapid Prototyping

Ship faster with AI builders and visual tools.

Prompt Engineering

Craft better prompts — patterns that actually work.

Demo & Pitch

Win the judges — presentation matters as much as code.

36-Hour Survival

Stay healthy, productive, and sane through the hackathon.

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Hacker Guide

Getting Started

Set up your dev environment early

Pick a track and scope ruthlessly

Split roles in your team

Register on Devpost immediately

AI & LLM Integration

OpenAI — Chat Completions API

OpenRouter — Try 500+ models with one API

Exa — AI-powered web search for RAG

Dify — Build AI apps without code

Qwen — Open-weight models you can run anywhere

Voice, Video & Media

Agora — Real-time video/voice in minutes

ElevenLabs — Text-to-speech & voice cloning

Backend & Data

Redis — Lightning-fast caching & vector search

AWS — Deploy anything at scale

Bright Data — Scrape any website without getting blocked

No-Code & Rapid Prototyping

Lovable — Describe it, get a full-stack app

Replit — Code in the browser, deploy in one click

Trae — AI-native code editor

n8n — Automate anything with visual workflows

Manus / OpenManus — AI agent that builds for you

Prompt Engineering

The system prompt formula

Chain-of-thought for complex reasoning

Few-shot examples beat long instructions

Structured output with JSON mode

Tool calling / function calling

Demo & Pitch

Structure your 3-minute pitch

Demo the happy path first

Name-drop sponsor tech

Your Devpost submission matters

36-Hour Survival

Sleep strategy

Commit early, commit often

Use the meals and snacks

Ask for help