Legal · Terms of use

The terms,
kept readable

These terms govern your use of HackHQ. By using the site you agree to them; if you do not agree, the fix is simply not to use the site. We have kept them short and honest - the one thing you must take away is in section two.

Effective August 14, 2026
01 · The service

What HackHQ is

HackHQ is a community-maintained directory of hackathons: a 3D globe, a browsable deck of listings, and an application tracker. The listing data is gathered from public sources and community submissions, is openly published, and is updated continuously by people and automation.

HackHQ is not a hackathon organizer. We do not run, sponsor, or endorse the events listed, and listing an event is not a partnership with it. Registering for a hackathon happens on the organizer’s own site, under the organizer’s own terms.

Listings can be wrong or stale. Dates shift, deadlines close early, venues change, events get cancelled. Accuracy is NOT guaranteed - always verify deadlines, eligibility, and details with the organizer before you plan around them.
02 · Accounts

Your account

  • Accounts are optional and handled by Clerk. Signing in unlocks the synced tracker; everything else works without one.
  • Give accurate account information and keep your sign-in method secure. What happens under your account is your responsibility.
  • We may suspend or remove accounts used to abuse the service - spam, scraping private endpoints, attacking other users, or breaking these terms.
  • You can stop using HackHQ at any time, and you can ask us to delete your account and data (see the privacy policy).
03 · Conduct

Acceptable use

The listing data is open on purpose - build with it. The service itself is shared infrastructure, so a few lines you must not cross:

  • No breaking things: do not probe, overload, or disrupt the site, its APIs, or its infrastructure, or try to access data that is not yours.
  • No abuse of the tracker or submission channels: no spam, no flooding, no automated junk submissions.
  • No unlawful use, and no impersonating HackHQ, organizers, or other people.
  • No misrepresenting HackHQ: do not present a fork or mirror as the official site.
04 · Contributions

Your submissions

Listings, corrections, and gallery photos are submitted through GitHub issues on our public repository, which means submissions are public from the moment you make them, under your GitHub account.

Ownership and license

You keep ownership of what you submit. By submitting, you grant HackHQ a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, display, reproduce, and distribute your submission as part of the site and its open-source repository. Accepted gallery photos are committed into the public repo and shown on the site with the credit you provide.

Your responsibility
  • Only submit content you have the rights to submit, and make sure identifiable people in a photo are okay with it being published.
  • Submissions must be accurate to your knowledge and free of malicious content.
  • We may edit, decline, or remove any submission - usually for accuracy, quality, or rights reasons.
05 · Ownership

Intellectual property

  • The HackHQ source code is open source under the MIT license - use it, fork it, build on it.
  • The HackHQ name, wordmark, and site content (copy, imagery, design) are reserved. Open-source code does not mean open-season branding: do not pass your project off as HackHQ.
  • Hackathon names and logos in listings belong to their organizers and appear for identification only.
06 · Elsewhere

Third-party links and embeds

HackHQ links out constantly - to organizers’ registration pages, resources, and the GitHub repo - and embeds third-party services such as Mapbox tiles. Those sites and services are not ours: we do not control them, do not endorse them, and are not responsible for their content, terms, or privacy practices. Your use of them is governed by their own terms.

07 · Disclaimers

No warranty, limited liability

This is the section lawyers write in capitals. Ours is short, but it matters:

HackHQ is provided AS IS and AS AVAILABLE, without warranties of any kind - express or implied - including accuracy, availability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. A free, community-maintained directory cannot promise that every deadline is right or that the site never goes down, so it does not.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, HackHQ and its contributors are NOT LIABLE for any indirect, incidental, consequential, or special damages, or for losses arising from your reliance on a listing - including a missed deadline, a cancelled event, or anything that happens at a hackathon. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the amount you paid us to use HackHQ, which is zero.

08 · Housekeeping

The rest of it

Termination

We may suspend or terminate access to the service (or any account) for breach of these terms or to protect the service and its users. Sections that by their nature should survive - licenses to public submissions, IP, disclaimers, and liability limits - survive termination.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the product evolves. Changes appear on this page with a new effective date, and material changes will be called out on the site. Using HackHQ after a change means you accept the updated terms.

Contact

Questions about these terms: hackheadquarters@gmail.com.