Key Dates

Eligibility

• Undergrads from SIT, SIM, SMU, SUSS, NTU

Prizes Categories

1. Best Overall - BuildFest Champion
2. Best Spec-Driven Build
3. Best Kiro Power-User
4. Most Practical Solution
5. Most Ambitious Build
6. Most Creative Use of Kiro
7. People's Choice

Judging Criteria for each of the Prize Categories

1. Best Overall — BuildFest Champion

The headline award, recognising the most complete and impressive project of the BuildFest.

Judges will be looking for:

• A problem worth solving — a clear, real need that justifies a week of effort.
• A working solution — your demo runs end to end and does what you claim, not just mock-ups of an idea.
• Strong execution — the project is coherent, reasonably complete, and well put together.
• Genuine use of Kiro — Kiro meaningfully shaped how you built the project, whether through spec-driven development, agents, hooks, or MCP.
• A clear story — your write-up and demo communicate the problem, your approach, and the result concisely and convincingly.

2. Best Spec-Driven Build

Recognising the team that best used Kiro's spec-driven workflow to plan and build their project.

Spec-driven development is at the heart of Kiro: you define your requirements, design your solution, and break the work into a plan — and then build against it. This award celebrates the team that did this most rigorously, and whose finished project genuinely reflects the spec they wrote.

Judges will review the spec files in your committed .kiro/specs folder and compare them against your build, looking for:

• A real, substantial spec — your requirements, design, and task plan are properly developed, not placeholder stubs.
• Clear requirements — well-formed user stories with testable acceptance criteria, so it is obvious what "done" means.
• A coherent design — your design explains how the solution works: its components, data flow, and the decisions behind them.
• Spec-to-code alignment — the project you shipped genuinely implements what your spec describes. This is the most important signal: a strong spec should be reflected in strong, matching code.
• A spec you actually lived in — your task progress and commit history show the spec guided the build throughout, rather than being written once and set aside.

3. Best Kiro Power-User

Recognising the team that used Kiro's advanced automation and extension capabilities most skilfully.

Beyond specs, Kiro offers a powerful toolbelt: agents that carry out multi-step work, hooks that automate that work on real triggers, and MCP integrations that connect Kiro to external services and data. This award celebrates the team that pushed these capabilities furthest to build something better and faster than they could by hand.

Judges will review your committed .kiro/ folder and your demo, looking for depth across any or all of the following:

• Effective agents — you used agents for meaningful, multi-step work (plan, act, verify), and guided them well with steering rules so they followed your project's conventions.
• Automation with hooks — you wired hooks to real events (such as on-save, or pre- and post-generation) to automate genuinely useful work like testing, validation, or documentation — and they actually ran.
• MCP integrations — you connected Kiro to an external service, data source, or tool through MCP in a way that is central to your project and demonstrably works. Building your own MCP server is a strong signal of depth.
• Sound judgement — above all, you showed an understanding of when to lean on Kiro's automation and when to steer it.

[note]
You do not need to use every capability to win this award. Deep, skilful use of one or two will outshine shallow use of all three. Show us your best craft.

4. Most Practical Solution

Recognising the project most ready to be used in the real world.

Judges will be looking for:

• A real user and a real problem — something an actual person or organisation would genuinely use.
• A focused scope — one useful thing done well, rather than many features left half-finished.
• Usability — someone could pick it up and use it without you there to explain it.
• Attention to the edges — sensible handling of errors and empty states, not only the ideal path.
• Readiness to deploy — it runs in a realistic environment, or is clearly close to it.

5. Most Ambitious Build

Recognising the boldest attempt — reach and technical stretch matter more than polish here.

Judges will be looking for:

• Scope and reach — you aimed high, whether through a hard problem, a broad feature set, or a significant technical challenge.
• Technical difficulty — you took on something genuinely demanding, such as a complex integration, real-time behaviour, or a multi-component system.
• Growth — you clearly went beyond what you already knew how to do.
• Substance — there is real, working progress to show, not just an ambitious description.

[Tip]
This category is forgiving of rough edges. A bold, partly finished build can outscore a tidy but simple one. Show us how far you reached and what you achieved.

6. Most Creative Use of Kiro

Recognising the most original idea, or the most inventive way of using Kiro to bring it to life.

Judges will be looking for:

• A fresh idea — a novel problem, an unexpected angle, or a clever twist on something familiar.
• Inventiveness — you used Kiro in a way you worked out for yourselves, beyond the patterns shown in the workshop.
• Delight — the project is clever, surprising, or simply enjoyable to experience.
• Coherence — the creativity serves the project; it is purposeful, not novelty for its own sake.

7. People's Choice

Decided by the BuildFest community through public voting.

This award is determined by votes from your fellow participants, not by the judging panel.

• How to vote — through likes on project pages in Devpost.
• When — voting opens once submissions close and closes before final judging begins. Exact times will be announced.
• Who can vote — registered BuildFest participants (Devpost login required).
• Tip for entrants — a clear title, a strong cover image, and a short demo video make your project far easier for the community to appreciate and support.

Tips for a Strong Submission

[Tip] Make your work easy to judge

• Tell a clear story. Lead with the problem, then your approach, then the result.

• Show, don't just tell. A short demo video is the single most effective way to convey what you built.

• Be specific about Kiro. Name the features you used and point to where they live in your repo.
• Polish the basics. A clear title, a good cover image, and a readable write-up go a long way.