A connectathon with an adversary.

Lineage

The ancestor is the standards connectathon: implementers implementing against each other until the standard holds. Connectathons optimize for interop findings that change the spec. We take the connectathon shape and add one thing it usually lacks: a funded, honored adversary. This project already works that way internally: its consent gate shipped only after an independent adversarial pass (90 tests; 4 defects found, fixed, and recorded). The events scale that practice to a room.

The spec-anchor rule

Every event anchors exactly one spec from the working system. Build briefs and attack targets are derived from that spec's own acceptance criteria, which our specs carry as a matter of doctrine. The event consumes specs. Challenges are never invented on stage.

The nine methods

The full method kit is being prepared for open publication (any community may adopt it; the floor is non-negotiable). In one table:

Build-and-attack mechanics

The one-day rhythm: build window → attack window → fix window → demo gate → demos → residue commit. The fix window is where the standard actually matures — a defect found at 14:00 and closed at 16:00, in the same room, with the finder and fixer at one table, is the whole argument for doing this in person.

• Pre-registration: attack targets ship with the build briefs, before the event, like a pre-registered study. Day-of freestyle attacking is welcome after the published targets are worked.
• Scoring symmetry: a written defect report scores like a shipped feature. The scoreboard says so out loud at open.
• Rotation: red and green histories are tracked across events; nobody is only ever an attacker.
• Every landed attack becomes residue: a defect report drafted before doors close, filed to the anchor spec's queue.

The demo gate

Between the fix window and the stage, one organizer runs a 90-second check per team, one question: what's on screen, and who could it hurt? Postcard-grade only (Method 2); the team's plain sentence (Method 8) is checked against what will actually be shown. A team whose demo can't run without raw data demos the mechanism on the synthetic pack. Needing raw data is itself a finding about the build.

Data-safety architecture

The claim is structural: no collection point exists.

• No shared drive, no upload endpoint, no "submit your project" step that ingests data. Committed repos carry code and synthetic fixtures only.
• Venue wifi is treated as hostile; the environment kit builds and runs offline. Local inference on the participant's own hardware serves the classes that never leave the device.
• Registration collects name, email, language, dietary need (nothing else), stated on the form, kept for event ops only.
• Incident protocol: raw personal data exposed → the safety officer (named at open, doubles with nothing) stops the room's sharing surfaces; what/who/how is logged; the data's owner decides everything further. The de-identified incident becomes residue too, and it stays in the record.
• Photography by lanyard consent colors; the no-photo choice is boring to make.

Judging — five axes, two benches

Equal weight; custodian and technical benches vote all five. Custodians judge from the demo and a two-minute plain-language answer. The code is never part of their judgment.

Compute, and the rungs

Sponsorship maps onto the same ladder the whole architecture stands on, where a person's archive lives and which classes of information may travel:

• The device rung: edge hardware (loaner machines capable of local inference) serves the classes that never leave the device. A hardware partner here sponsors the most private tier of the work.
• The operator rungs: cloud credits touch only synthetic material and explicitly consented classes: synthetic-pack generation, event infrastructure, consented workloads. Private tiers are never touched. The plain sentences on stage say which computers carried what.

Done right, the sponsorship story teaches the architecture: which sponsor served which rung is legible from the demos themselves. No compute or hardware partner is named on this page because no such conversation has concluded; when one does, it will be announced dated, with its rung stated.

Never in scope

• Pooling or uploading participant archives: the step does not exist and will not be added for convenience.
• Health information in registration, event systems, or committed artifacts.
• Prizes or rankings for data richness: nobody wins for having the most interesting life.
• Exclusivity, participant-list sales or export, sponsor access to anyone's information.
• IP assignment or equity as a participation term: contributors keep what they came with; commons work stays common.
• Bigger rooms as the way to grow: growth comes from more rooms, more hosts, more languages.

Attack here (pre-registered, before the first event)

The format itself should survive what it asks specs to survive. Standing targets, published now, in advance of event #0. Bring these to Write to us → "security," or to the first red team:

Findings are credited in the residue ledger and protected by the security safe harbor in our Terms, §15. A target nobody can land gets retired with its history shown; a landed one changes the manual, dated.

Where this stands