Frame

A frame is the constraint that bounds what kinds of work belong in a hackathon at all. The frame is what makes a project recognizable as in-scope or out-of-scope before the rubric ever applies, and what gives judges shared context against which to evaluate non-commensurate work. Without a frame, "Build anything" produces incoherent judging and gameable scope, because no boundary exists to exclude work whose connection to the event is tenuous. See the-frame.

Themes are one valid kind of frame — "AI for good," "Sustainability," "Smart Elevators" — but the broader category includes civic problem areas (NASA Space Apps' Challenge Statement themes), government policy domains (Smart India Hackathon's Ministry-owned theme buckets), externally-provided global frameworks (the UN Sustainable Development Goals as used by the Google Solution Challenge), sponsor problem sets, academic research themes, and technology platform focuses. A frame is specific enough to constrain the project space and broad enough to admit the creative responses the event was designed to elicit. See theme for the narrower term and problem-statements for how frames become the workable artifacts participants build against.