You ship, We ship

“You ship, we ship” (YSWS) events are a family of programs ran by teens that encourage teens to learn and build by offering rewards as incentives.

The premise is simple: spend time creating a project (could be a website, software, or hardware) and receive a prize in return.

Prizes can range from USBs and notebooks to laptops and iPads. Hearing this, you might think “no way getting a laptop is practically feasible, right?”

YSWS is not like the carnival where it is technically possible to get the highest prize but is practically unfeasible because it requires tons if attempts. In YSWS, even the highest prizes are achievable. For example, Flavortown had the Macbook Neo as an option in its shop which could be bought for 108 hours if the project(s) that were shipped were high quality. Flavortown ran for 90 days which meant if you spent a little over an hour a day working on a high-quality project, a Macbook Neo could’ve been shipped to your doorstep.

Some programs give out grants instead of physical prizes. For physical prizes: If you’re outside of the United States, additional fees for customs/imports may apply. :(

:What’s a grant?

How is the quality of a project determined?

Submitted projects are given a quick review by the Shipwright team to make sure that it works, then handed off to the organizer of the YSWS event to make sure that it follows the rules and requirements of the YSWS event. The Fraud Squad does one last final check before the project is approved for prizes.

YSWS events that accept all projects, no matter the theme (like Flavortown), use a different system where other participants vote on the quality of a shipped project. The project creator then gets points based on the quality of their project as determined by the voters.

How is time tracked?

Time spent coding is tracked with Hackatime. Hackatime has support for a lot of different IDEs like sublime, VSCode, and even Unity and UE5. Hackatime will automatically detect when you start coding and when you stop.

For hardware projects or 3d modeling, Lapse can be used. Lapse records your screen (or camera) and uploads that video encrypted to their servers where they log the time you spent in Hackatime. Lapse can also be used to record time for art or anything else that Hackatime doesn’t support.

Time spent learning (reading documentation or watching a YouTube video) don’t count. The idea is to get hours of practice in by building and debugging. Learning is a prerequisite to building.

For art: usually, art can only be 1/3rd of the total time spent on the project but read the rules of the YSWS event to make sure. Some events allow a higher cap or no cap at all (in the case of Storyboard).

In person hackathons

Some YSWS events give tickets to hackathons instead of prizes where you goof off and meet new people and have fun. Past hackathons have taken Hack Clubbers to Tokyo, Japan, to build a popup game arcade (Shiba hackathon) and to Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada to create a game from a given image (.jpeg hackathon).

Beds and food are covered but flights aren’t automatically covered. Hack Club does offer flight stipends, but you’ll have to ship a few more hours for them. If you’re driving, taking a bus, or a train, Gas reimburses you 10 cents per mile traveled. You’ll have to show receipts as proof, though!

Universal rules

YSWS events can create their own rules or requirements for submission so you should read their rules before participating but there are several universal rules that every YSWS event has.

Don’t inflate your hours by typing random text in a text text document or record a black screen. Taking breaks is fine but if you’re using Lapse, remember to pause the recording or cut out the gap later
Time spent on a project submitted to one YSWS event cannot be submitted to another YSWS event (no double-dipping)
Time that was accrued in Hackatime before a YSWS started also cannot be submitted

How to participate

Part 1: verify you’re a student

To participate in YSWS programs, you have to verify you’re a teenager by providing one of the following:

A government-issued ID (ex. Passport, NIC), or
A student ID & report card/transcript (only in certain countries: US, CA, AU, SG)
:How do I verify I’m a teen?
:How does Hack Club handle privacy?

Find a ysws

Hurray! You’re verified as a student!

Visit https://ysws.hackclub.com and choose an on-going YSWS event you find interesting and take note of the theme. Not all YSWS events have a specific theme and accept any project btw.

Start on your project

Make sure Hackatime is installed in your IDE (or use Lapse to record your screen if you’re too lazy) and start coding! Make sure you’re following the theme and the rules of the YSWS event. And make sure to commit your code to GitHub periodically.

:Wait, I’m a beginner. What is an IDE and what is GitHub and what are commits?

Submitting the project

Congrats on finishing your project!

Look for a link to a submission form or a “submit” button on the events website. For “we accept any project” YSWS events like Flavortown, you submitted it directly on the website (you have to login first).

If your project is a website, it will have to be hosted. If you don’t have a backend, you can use Vercel or Netlify to host the site. Otherwise, you’ll have to rent a VPS, use your own computer, or use Nest (Nest is explained in the Services and developer tools section).

Extra information

Philosophy

The philosophy behind YSWS events is this: to incentivize students to practice and make silly projects. So reading documentation or watching a YouTube video don’t count as hours but the hours spent building something using the knowledge gained from reading documentation or watching that YouTube video count. The idea is to get hours of practice in by building and debugging.

Deven wrote a short blog post about how Hack Club approaches YSWS and how it determines funding titled The plan for hack club world dominance if you’re interested and want to read it.

How do I make my own YSWS event?

Read this canvas in the Slack to learn how to make a Slack: https://hackclub.enterprise.slack.com/docs/T0266FRGM/F09JLPVEJP6 And read the Philosophy section above to understand the purpose of YSWS and get a little behind-the-scenes of how YSWS programs actually work and how they’re set up and the logigstics and such.

History on YSWS events

YSWS events haven’t always existed. Hack Club was originally meant to be a place to find workshops to learn and for students to create a “hack club” in their own school to teach about computers and build projects around them. The first general “any project, no matter the theme, is accepted” YSWS event was Arcade in 2024. Since then, several other general YSWS have been hosted, including Summer of Making 2025 and Flavortown in 2026. Each YSWS is unique in the sense that it each has their own website and unique name and gimick.

In the beginning, #hack-hour was used to track hours for YSWS events, but during Arcade, #hackatime-help was introduced which, used Wakatime to integrate into your IDE to better track your hours and lower fraud by reporting when you were typing and which files were opened and when they were opened.