Rules and scoring

The rubric, 100 points

Ties go to the player with more hidden check points, then to the earlier final commit. If those are level too, the battle is a draw.

The AI panel

• 3 AI judges from different providers score product quality and code. They see the brief, your code and which hidden checks passed, with names, handles and repo owners removed. They don't see the preview and never learn who built what.
• Every score must cite evidence: a file and line range, a line of the brief or a hidden check result, quoted word for word. Every quote is checked against what the judge was shown. A judge that answers without evidence, or quotes something that isn't there, is thrown out.
• The middle score of the judges counts. At least 2 valid judges are needed. A judge that errors out is asked once more; if it still fails, the other judges score and a person on staff checks the result.
• If judges disagree by more than 15% of a criterion's points, or their totals are more than 15 points apart, a person on staff checks the score before it's final.

Clock and buzzer

• The server reveals the brief to both players at the same time and starts the clock.
• At the buzzer the server freezes both workspaces. Commits after it don't count. Whatever is in your workspace is judged, committed or not, but changes left uncommitted at the buzzer count as your final change landing at the buzzer: no time bonus, and last on the final-commit tie-breaker. Commit as you go.
• Nothing on your side can stop or extend the clock. Staff can pause both players for a platform problem, and both clocks resume together.
• Staff can also extend the clock, but only for a platform problem and only for both players at once. Both get the same extra minutes. The extension and its reason are logged, shown to both players and announced on stream.
• Warnings come at 10 minutes, 5 minutes and 1 minute.

Workspaces and your AI login

• Each player gets a new cloud workspace for each battle, with an editor, a terminal and a preview URL.
• You sign in to your own AI tool inside it. Build Wars never sees, proxies, logs or stores that login.
• Login folders are wiped at the buzzer and left out of every backup. The workspace is deleted after scoring.
• Any AI tool that runs in the terminal is allowed. Help from another person is not.

Your loadout

• Your loadout is how you like to work: your shell, editor settings and extensions, dotfiles, and your AI tool's settings and instructions. It goes into every workspace you get before the clock starts, so setting up costs you no battle time.
• Your loadout is settings and instructions, not work on the brief. No project code, templates or components, whether they sit in the files, get fetched by a hook or extension, or get cloned during the battle. Files that run when your workspace opens, like your shell startup and tool hooks, can't download code or start a project. Instruction files can't carry a code block over 20 lines. Editor extensions must be at least 30 days old, and snippet extensions aren't allowed.
• Bring no code you wrote for the brief before it was revealed, in your loadout or any other way. Libraries and tools anyone can install are fine.
• Keys, tokens and sign-ins never go in a loadout. You sign in inside the workspace, as always.
• Your loadout is locked for a battle when its lobby opens. Changes after that apply to your next battle. We keep the copy each battle used. Anything in it that fetches, installs or names the brief is shown to staff with the scorecard, on every battle.
• Anyone can pick one of the presets instead of making their own. A plain workspace is always allowed.

No-shows, forfeits and voids

• Check-in closes 15 minutes before your battle. If you miss it, a reserve player who checked in takes your slot. If no reserve is free, your opponent wins by walkover.
• If you leave a battle or ask to stop, you forfeit and your opponent wins. A walkover or forfeit has no rubric score.
• Staff void a battle when a platform failure ruins it for both players. A void has no result, doesn't count on either record, and both players get a new slot.
• Breaking a rule can mean disqualification. Staff cite the rule, the result goes to your opponent, and you can appeal.
• Every one of these decisions is logged with a reason that both players see and that shows on the results page.

Appeals

Your rating

• Everyone starts at 1500. A ranked battle moves your rating once its result is final, which is after the 24 hour appeal window. Only the outcome counts: a win, a draw or a loss. Scores, margins, fan votes and memberships never enter it.
• Your first 10 rated results are provisional: your rating moves twice as fast and shows with a mark. Quick Battles are ranked. Practice never is, and Battle Night 1 is unranked.
• Playing the same opponent again within a day counts for nothing. Over 30 days your third meeting counts half and later ones nothing. Staff see every repeated pairing, any player whose wins mostly come from one opponent, and any new account that only wins by a wide margin; a battle that wasn't a real contest has its rating change voided and logged.

Awards

1. 01

   Winner

   Highest rubric score. The only official result.

2. 02

   Fan Favorite

   Most fan votes after the buzzer. One vote per account. Never affects the score.

3. 03

   Sponsor's Pick

   Chosen by the sponsor, when there is one. Shown separately from the winner.

Conduct

• Build alone. Chat, co-streams and the host are muted for players during the battle.
• Glitch only comments on platform events and never reads your code or prompts.
• Don't try to read the hidden checks, reach the other workspace or slow down the preview.