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Jess Lee for The DEV Team

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Announcing the GitHub Actions Hackathon on DEV!

We are thrilled to announce a new hackathon on DEV: GitHub Actions For Open Source!

From now through to September 17, you’ll have the opportunity to win sweet prizes by building and sharing GitHub Actions that benefit open source. We want to check out all your awesome workflows. From API management to project management, and everything in between! Read on to learn more.

What Are GitHub Actions?

GitHub Actions are individual tasks that, when combined, result in a custom workflow that’s all your own!

GitHub Actions allow you to automate and customize your software development workflows. Actions are located in the same place you store code, collaborate with peers, solve issues, and ship open source software — GitHub!

Whether you build a custom action or integrate an existing one into your workflow for the hackathon, we hope that you’ll walk away with a greater understanding of the value of GitHub Actions — for you and the open source community.

We’re excited to see how you approach this challenge! More on GitHub Actions here.

Categories

The GitHub Actions Hackathon is calling for projects in these categories:

  • Maintainer Must-Haves: make the lives of open source maintainers easier.
  • DIY Deployments: improve the deployment process for open source projects.
  • Interesting IoT: celebrating projects that integrate with IoT in some way
  • Phone Friendly: workflows built for Mobile (PWA readiness, iOS/Android)
  • Wacky Wildcards: anything that doesn’t fit in an above category (note, truly wacky submissions are encouraged)

Why Participate?

The core philosophy behind open source software is code, technology, and the services we use are stronger and more secure when peer-review is both solicited and easily accessible. To be truly involved in the open source community, you (of course) need to participate! GitHub Actions are the perfect way to contribute to open source while optimizing your workflows.

If that’s not incentive enough, we also have some sweet, sweet prizes!

Prizes

5 Grand Prize Winners (one in each category):

  • $1,500 USD gift card or equivalent
  • $300 USD credit to the DEV Shop
  • GitHub Swag Pack
  • DEV Sticker Pack
  • DEV “Actions Hackathon” grand prize winner badge

Runner-Up Prizes (10 Total):

  • $250 USD gift card or equivalent
  • $150 USD credit to the DEV Shop
  • GitHub Swag Pack
  • DEV Sticker Pack
  • DEV “Actions Hackathon” runner-up badge

Participants (with a valid project):

  • DEV Sticker Pack
  • DEV “Actions Hackathon” participant profile badge

How to Participate

There’s already an awesome library of GitHub Actions, so for this hackathon, we challenge you to submit workflows by leveraging existing actions. You are, of course, welcome to create custom actions, too.

In order to submit a valid project, please follow the submission process and rules closely.

How To Submit

  • Document your project journey along the way with the #ActionsHackathon tag.
  • Submit your project as a DEV post by filling out this template to share your workflows (.yml) and/or code repository.
  • If you’re sharing a repository as part of your submission, please be sure the project includes an open source license and README.

Additional Rules

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open only to 18+. Contest entry period ends September 17, 11:59 pm PT. Contest is void where prohibited or restricted by law or regulation. For Official Rules, see Contest Announcement Page and General Contest Official Rules.

Community Support

The GitHub team will be available to help anyone who runs into issues or has questions related to GitHub Actions. You can reach the GitHub team by leaving a comment in the GitHub Actions Hackathon help thread.

We also have a community update thread where you can share your ideas and gather feedback as you begin making progress on your submission. We encourage you to share your progress along the way to generate more excitement and benefit from additional community feedback suggestions!

Important Dates 🗓

  • August 13: Hackathon Begins!
  • September 17: Hackathon Submission Due at 11:59 PM PST.
  • September 23: Hackathon Winners Announced

We can’t wait to see what you build. Happy coding!

Top comments (103)

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

As a "learn by example" kind of person, I'm really excited to see the submissions to help me make better use of GitHub actions. I have yet to hack very creatively on this really neat extensible tool and I suspect the submissions will go a long way for me personally.

Can't wait to see what folks build!

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peter profile image
Peter Kim Frank • Edited

I'm looking forward to seeing what the community comes up with for this contest across all categories, but especially for Wacky Wildcards. You can get pretty dang creative here. I'm a fan of this Profile Readme where you can actually play chess (powered by GitHub Actions).

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maximization profile image
Maxim Orlov

Oh sweet! Didn't know something like this was possible with Github Actions 🤯

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jai_dewani profile image
Jai dewani • Edited

Ohh yeah, when this feature rolled out to everyone, I came across a lot of these innovative ideas of using Github actions..... kinda jealous of them for creating something so sick 🤘

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raisinten profile image
Darshan Sen

I was totally amazed when I found out that GitHub Actions can let you do that!
It inspired me to make a Sokoban game driven by GitHub Actions:
dev.to/raisinten/sokoban-action-ji9
Thank you so much! 😃

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krishnakakade profile image
krishna kakade

hello Peter @ben @jess if we are participating in groups so every member will get a badge but in the last time dev team given badges to single-member one who submitted project can you guys work on that reply, please

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peter profile image
Peter Kim Frank

Hey @krishnakakade confirming that every member of a team that submits a valid project will receive a badge.

If we messed up and forgot to award a badge to a team member last time around, please send us an email to yo@dev.to and we'll get it rewarded properly!

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krishnakakade profile image
krishna kakade

last time we are the third runnerup in Dev hackathon I did project with @itshally she didn't receive badge yet

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loukikgatta profile image
Loukik

Brilliant! Truly defines Wacky Wildcards 🤯

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danielltw profile image
Daniel Leong 🇸🇬

If someone is looking for a solution to trigger one action from a repo to the next repo, you have repository dispatch.

Here was what I have research and found.

gist.github.com/Daniel-ltw/552b908...

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torstendittmann profile image
Torsten Dittmann

Actually I was thinking about creating a more complex GitHub Action for one of my projects that nobody has done before and might be useful for a lot of projects!

Happy hacking! ;-)

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graciegregory profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her)

This is awesome! Can't wait to see it!

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jdno profile image
Jan David

Uh this might be exactly the motivation I need to implement one of my ideas. Have been long thinking about a GitHub Action that adds some features to template repositories. 😁

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kniraj profile image
Niraj Kamdar • Edited

I am very excited for this hackathon and I already had an action to build in my to-do list and this hackathon was the motivation I needed. Thanks for hosting this event.

I would also like to ask couple of questions regarding hackathon.

  1. Can we submit more than one actions?
  2. Can we submit actions we built in past?
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peter profile image
Peter Kim Frank

Really awesome to hear that you'll be participating, and that this contest provided a bit of extra motivation to get started.

  1. Can we submit more than one actions?

Yes, you can submit as many entries as you'd like, but you'll only be eligible to win one prize.

  1. Can we submit actions we built in past?

For this contest, you'll only be able to submit projects that you started after this announcement post was published.

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yoursunny profile image
Junxiao Shi

Can I submit an existing project that did not have GitHub Actions and I start integrating GitHub Actions after this announcement was published?

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peter profile image
Peter Kim Frank

Yes, as your submission will be the undertaking of of integrating the action and/or workflow into the project.

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maverikai profile image
Aditya

Hey Peter, though I have submitted my post before the dead line yet I haven't received any mail or badge in my profile!! What to do?

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maverikai profile image
Aditya
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crazymax profile image
CrazyMax • Edited

Oh boy, can wait to see what actions you're going to use folks. If you use one of mine please tell me:

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kewbish profile image
Emilie Ma

Ope - I'm too young. Looks super cool tho, can't wait to see what everyone comes up with!

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aritdeveloper profile image
Arit Developer

I'm looking to learn so much about Github Actions!

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graciegregory profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her)

This is going be so cool

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bogdaaamn profile image
Bogdan Covrig

Absolutely love it!! Just got myself into GitHub Actions and thought about developing for some of my projects. Can’t wait to share my thoughts 💕💕

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jess profile image
Jess Lee

Yay!

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codingcoop profile image
CodingCoop

Amazing idea! I fell in love with github actions a few months ago and now this pushes us to be creative with it! Stoked to give it a shot!

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ileriayo profile image
Ileriayo Adebiyi

Cameras, Lights, ...Github-Actions!!!

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dephraiim profile image
Ephraim Atta-Duncan

The Wacky Wildcards section will be really interesting.

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wajahatkarim profile image
Wajahat Karim 🇵🇰

Wow. This is super cool. I received my swag and a beautiful coffee cup a few weeks ago from the first Github Hackathon competition creating my first Github Action "Hugo on Fire" (github.com/wajahatkarim3/hugo-on-fire)

This is a great competition and its going to be lots of fun to bring another idea I have in mind in reality.