Getting Started with Innovate

Your Complete Guide to Hackathon Success

Welcome to Aderant Innovate! This guide will walk you through every step needed to participate in the hackathon, from your initial sign-in to submitting your final project. Follow these steps in order to ensure a smooth experience.

0

Workstation Setup

Before you start, make sure your development environment is ready. Follow the instructions below for your operating system.

Core Tools

1. Install Git

Git is usually pre-installed on macOS. You can verify by running git --version.

2. Install Node.js

We recommend using nvm (Node Version Manager) to manage Node.js versions.

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.7/install.sh | bash

3. Install Python

First ensure Xcode Command Line Tools are installed, then install Python via Homebrew (if not already installed).

xcode-select --install
python --version
#If not installed, run
brew install python

IDE Setup

You can use any IDE that you prefer, but for this document we'll explain using Cursor and VSCode.

Cursor (Recommended)

Cursor is a code editor built for programming with AI. It provides native AI agent capabilities to help you write, debug, and understand code faster.

  1. Access Cursor via the OneLogin portal to provision an account
  2. Download and install Cursor
  3. Install the Remote-SSH plugin

VS Code

Visual Studio Code is a popular code editor that provides AI agent capabilities through Github Copilot.

  1. Download and install VS Code
  2. Install the Github Codespaces Extension
  3. Login to Github in VS Code to enable Github Copilot

Github Setup

1. Account & CLI

  • Ensure that you have a Github account setup with your aderant.com email
  • Install the Github CLI:
brew install gh

2. Setup SSH Key

Generate a new SSH key for Github authentication.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com" -f ~/.ssh/github

3. Login with Github CLI

Authenticate with Github to enable repository access.

gh auth login -h github.com -s codespace
1

Sign In

Your journey begins with signing into the Aderant Innovate platform using your company credentials. We use Okta single sign-on (SSO) to provide secure, seamless authentication across all Aderant services.

Click the "Sign In" button in the top right corner of any page. You'll be redirected to Okta where you can authenticate with your Aderant email and password. Once authenticated, you'll automatically return to the Innovate platform.

Upon completing sign in, you will receive an invitation to join the aderant-innovate-akl Github organization. Please check your email and accept this invitation to ensure you have full access to the organization's repositories and resources.

2

Connect Accounts

After signing in, you'll be prompted to connect both your Github account and Slack account. This allows us to ensure all users are automatically connected to the correct resources.

Connect GitHub

Connecting your GitHub account is essential for repository management and collaboration. The platform will automatically create repositories for your team and manage access control throughout the hackathon.

Click the "Connect GitHub" button during registration or from your user profile. You'll be redirected to GitHub to authorize the Aderant Innovate GitHub App. Grant the necessary permissions to allow repository creation and management.

  • Authorizes the platform to create repositories on your behalf
  • Enables automatic team member access management
  • Allows webhook integration for deployment automation
  • Provides activity tracking and collaboration features

Connect Slack

Slack integration enables seamless communication and real-time notifications throughout the hackathon. Connect your Slack account to receive important updates, deployment notifications, and team messages directly in Slack.

Click the "Connect Slack" button and authorize the Aderant Innovate app in your Slack workspace. This connection allows the platform to send you personalized notifications and enables team coordination features.

  • Get notified about team activities and mentions
  • Stay informed about hackathon announcements
  • Find a mentor
  • Brainstorm project ideas
  • Form a team
  • Access direct messaging with team members
3

Bootcamp Resources

The bootcamp exercises will be done in assigned pairs and will walk through a series of instructor led exercises to explore software engineering with AI tools.

Repositories

Users will need to interact with a number of public Github repositories during the exercises. Users can use their local IDE with an AI Agent (Cursor or Github Copilot in VSCode) to perform the exercises. You can create repositories in the `aderant-innovate-akl` organization on Github for your exercises.Note that the links below are for reference only and you'll be instructed when to interact with them:

LLM API Keys

For some portions of the bootcamp you may need an OpenAI or Anthropic LLM Key.

Please sign in to view API keys

OpenAI Key
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Anthropic Key
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4

Create Team

Now it's time to form your hackathon team! You can either create a new team or join an existing one. Teams can have multiple members who will collaborate on building and deploying your project together.

Navigate to the Teams page from the Hackathon menu. Click "Create New Team" and provide a unique team name. You'll receive an access code that you can share with teammates to invite them to join your team.

Team Creation Options:

  • Create a New Team: Start fresh with your own team
  • Join Existing Team: Navigate the directory of teams that are looking for members
  • Team Size: Teams can have 1-3 members depending on your project scope

💡 Managing Team Membership

Did you know that you can invite team members and request to join teams directly from the platform? Check out your Team Page or the All Teams page to manage your team members.

5

Sync AWS Account

Our sponsor, AWS, has given us access to their cloud services via an isolated sandbox account per team. These sandbox AWS accounts provide you with powerful cloud resources to build and deploy your hackathon project.

Sandbox AWS accounts are automatically assigned to a team upon team creation. Syncing AWS allows the Innovate platform to automatically configure the new account for automated deployments, including setting up ECR (Elastic Container Registry) for Docker images and deployment pipelines.

Steps for Syncing AWS (from the My Team page):

  1. Click "Sync AWS"
  2. Open the AWS console using the button provided
  3. Login with the one-time passcode
  4. Accept the terms and conditions to join the event
  5. Use the "AWS CLI Credentials" link in the left nav to retrieve short-term credentials
    💡 Tip: If you lose these credentials, you can always return to the console to generate new ones
  6. Copy the AWS credential values into the sync setup form

✅ Successful Sync

If syncing is successful, you should see the status in the AWS section of My Team show "Synced".

6

Repository Creation

With your team and AWS account set up, it's time to create your project repository. Repository creation is handled via the Innovate platform and not directly through GitHub, so that AWS deployment credentials are managed on your behalf. The platform automatically creates a GitHub repository for your team with the proper configuration, webhooks, and access controls already in place.

All members of the team (including those who join the team after repository creation) are automatically assigned the Admin role for owned repositories. This ensures everyone on your team has full access to manage and contribute to the project.

🔐 Automatic Credential Injection

Credentials are automatically injected into repository secrets and variables to be used in CI/CD pipelines. These are long-lived credentials for deployment purposes that are generated via the AWS account sync.

{{vars.TEAM_NAME}}- Your team's name identifier
{{vars.AWS_REGION}}- AWS region for deployments
{{vars.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID}}- AWS access key for authentication
{{secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}}- AWS secret key (encrypted)

Repository Creation Form Steps:

  1. Repository Name - Choose a unique, descriptive name for your project
  2. Description - Provide a brief description of what your project does
  3. Templates - Select a template to get started quickly
    • Browse available templates from the dropdown
    • Click the template name to preview its contents on GitHub
    • Templates include pre-configured Dockerfiles and CI/CD workflows

💡 Template Resources

View all available repository templates to find the best starting point for your project:

Browse All Templates →

✅ After Creation

Once your repository is created, you'll see it listed in the repositories section of your team page. Use the "View" link to access the repository on GitHub, where you can clone it locally and start building your project. Every push to the main branch will automatically trigger a deployment to your AWS environment.

7

Building Your Project

You are welcome to develop your application using any IDE and your current setup. For ease of setup, we've also made use of Github Codespaces to simplify development.

Github Codespaces

Codespaces set up remote isolated development environments that can be accessed directly in the browser or via your IDE. They include all required tools and frameworks for development.

Creating a Codespace

After creating a repository using the repository creation form in your team page from a template. Navigate to the repository, click the Code button, switch to the Codespaces tab and create a new codespace from main.

Developing in your codespace with the browser

Launch your codespace from the codespaces tab to open a self-contained VSCode environment in your browser. You have access to install any extension within this environment. Codespaces are built using devcontainers, which allows for immediate creation and hosting of resources with port forwarding. Develop as your normally would and configure port forwarding using the 'Ports' tab in your VSCode terminal.

Developing in your codespace with VSCode

VSCode has a direct integration with Codespaces. After creating the codespace, you can click 'Open in Visual Studio Code' from the more options menu next to the created codespace.

Developing in your codespace with Cursor

Cursor requires additional tools to connect remotely to the codespace. We can accomplish this using the GH CLI that you've installed.

  • Ensure you've logged into the GH CLI with the codespace scope:gh auth login -h github.com -s codespace
  • After creating the codespace, update your SSH config with the autogenerated ssh configuration.
        touch ~/.ssh/config
    echo "\n" >> ~/.ssh/config
    gh codespace ssh --config >> ~/.ssh/config
  • Open Cursor and open your commands panel using CMD/Ctrl + Shift + P
  • Search for Remote SSH - Connect to Host
  • Click your Codespace to remotely connect to the environment.
8

Deployment Setup

Your applications are deployed to AWS using AWS Copilot, an open-source command-line interface that simplifies building, releasing, and operating production-ready containerized applications. Copilot automates the setup and deployment process, so you can focus on your code rather than AWS configuration.

Deployments are fully automated through GitHub Actions. Every push to your repository's main branch triggers a workflow that builds your Docker image, pushes it to Amazon ECR, and deploys it to AWS using Copilot. Your application becomes accessible via a public URL within minutes.

🏗️ What AWS Copilot Builds Automatically

Behind the scenes, Copilot provisions and configures a complete production infrastructure:

  • Amazon ECS & Fargate - Serverless container orchestration
  • Application Load Balancer - Traffic distribution and SSL termination
  • Amazon ECR - Secure Docker image storage
  • VPC & Security Groups - Network isolation and security
  • IAM Roles & Policies - Proper AWS permissions
  • CloudWatch Logs - Centralized application logging

📦 Understanding Copilot Concepts

Application: The highest-level grouping for your entire project. All your services and environments belong to one application.
Environment: A deployment stage (dev, staging, prod). Each environment is isolated with its own AWS resources. Your team uses a dev environment.
Service: A specific component of your application (frontend, api, worker). Services run in containers and can be deployed to multiple environments.

🚀 GitHub Actions Deployment Workflow

The included GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/deploy.yaml) automatically:

  1. Detects your Copilot application, environments, and services
  2. Deploys all environments in parallel
  3. Builds Docker images for each service
  4. Pushes images to Amazon ECR
  5. Deploys services to their respective environments
  6. Provides deployment URLs and status

The workflow uses these automatically-injected credentials:

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID (variable)
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY (secret)
AWS_REGION (variable)

💻 Local Development Commands

For local testing and development, you can use these Copilot CLI commands:

copilot app init myapp

Initialize a new Copilot application

copilot env init --name dev --region us-east-1

Create a development environment

copilot svc init

Initialize a new service (choose Load Balanced Web Service)

copilot svc deploy --name frontend --env dev

Manually deploy a service to an environment

copilot svc logs --name frontend --follow

View real-time logs from your service

✅ Automated Deployments

Once your repository is created with a template, deployments are automatic. Simply push your code to the main branch, and GitHub Actions handles the rest. Monitor progress in the Actions tab of your repository, and find your deployment URL in the workflow output or your team dashboard.

9

Project Submission

When your project is ready for judging, it's time to submit it officially! Project submissions are done from the My Team page, where you can showcase your team's hard work and innovation.

Your submission is your opportunity to demonstrate the value and impact of your solution to the judges. Make sure to highlight what makes your project unique, how you leveraged AI, and the business value it delivers.

📋 Project Submission Requirements:

A complete submission consists of three key components:

1. Source Code Links

Links to all source code repositories hosted on GitHub. Ensure your repositories are accessible to judges and include a comprehensive README with setup instructions.

2. Demo Video (3-5 minutes)

A video demonstration of your project that highlights:

  • Key features and functionality
  • How AI is integrated and used
  • Business impact and value proposition
  • Live walkthrough of the application
3. Deployed Application Link

A link to your live, running application deployed on AWS. Judges will interact with your application directly, so ensure it's stable and accessible.

🎯 Review and Selection Process

  1. Initial Review: Judges will review all submitted projects based on the evaluation criteria
  2. Finalist Notification: Your team will be notified if your project has been selected as a finalist
  3. Final Presentations: If selected, your team will present your project and provide a live demo for all judges and participants
  4. Winner Announcement: Winners will be revealed at the closing ceremony

💡Pro Tip: Plan Your Presentation Early

Don't wait until the deadline to think about your submission! Break up responsibilities among team members early so that your demo video and presentation are polished and professional. Assign roles such as:

  • Video recording and editing
  • Script writing and narration
  • Application testing and documentation
  • Presentation slides preparation

Remember: Submissions can be edited or deleted after submission, so test early and test often. Submit a draft version to ensure everything works, then refine it before the deadline.

✅ Submission Checklist

Before submitting, verify:

  • All GitHub repository links are correct and accessible
  • Demo video is 3-5 minutes and covers features, AI usage, and business impact
  • Deployed application is running and accessible via the provided URL
  • Video hosting (YouTube, Loom, etc.) is set to public or unlisted
  • README files include setup instructions and project overview
  • You've tested all links from an incognito browser

You're Ready to Innovate! 🚀

You've completed all the setup steps and you're ready to start building. Remember, this hackathon is about creativity, impact, and having fun while pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI.

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