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Hackathon team generator

Hand-picking hackathon teams turns into a popularity contest. Randomise it instead — and use ratings to balance senior engineers across teams.

0 participants

Tip: set ratings with the ★ pickers below, or paste them inline like Alice, 5 on each line.

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Use case

When to use this

Internal company hackathons, university hack days, civic-tech weekends. Skill ratings keep one team from hoarding all the senior engineers.

How to use it

Step by step

  1. 1

    Paste participants

    Names or handles.

  2. 2

    Rate seniority/skill 1–5

    Quick estimates work fine.

  3. 3

    Generate balanced teams

    Each team has a mix of seniors and juniors.

Suggested team size

Four is the magic number. Three is too small for parallel work, five is too many for a 24-hour sprint. Preset to 4 per team here.

Why a generic generator works for this audience

There's a temptation to think a sport-specific or classroom-specific tool would be 'better' than a generic generator. In practice the opposite is true: the rules of fair team-splitting are the same whether you're dividing a Year 7 PE class or a Sunday-league football squad. What changes between audiences is the framing — the language used in the guide, the typical group size, the kinds of ratings people record. The underlying maths (Fisher–Yates shuffle, snake-draft balancing) is identical. That's why this site uses one generator across many audience-specific pages: the same engine, with copy and presets tuned to the context.

Save your roster between sessions

If you'll regenerate teams from the same roster repeatedly — every Tuesday training, every Friday game night — paste the names once, click 'Copy as text', and save the result in a note app or a pinned message. Next session, paste it back. There's no account system to maintain and nothing to forget; the names live wherever you keep your other notes. For coaches managing multiple squads, prefix each name with a one-letter squad tag (e.g. 'A Alex', 'B Sam') and use the filter step to keep only the relevant tag before generating.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Can I lock people who already self-formed?

Enter them as one entry: 'Alice + Ben + Cara'.

Is it appropriate to use this with under-18s?

Yes. The generator doesn't ask for personal information, doesn't display ads inside the tool itself, and runs entirely client-side. Many teachers use it weekly. See the trust and safety page for the full position on under-16 use.

Can I export the roster to a spreadsheet?

Yes — the 'Export CSV' button gives you a two-column file (team, name) that opens cleanly in Excel, Google Sheets, and Numbers. From there you can pivot, filter, or merge with attendance records.

What if someone arrives late?

Add their name to the textarea and regenerate. If you want to preserve the existing teams and just slot the latecomer in, use the 'Add to smallest team' shortcut instead of regenerating — it places them on whichever team currently has the fewest members.

Keep exploring

Related tools & guides

Ready to run your event?

Free forever for basic use. No signup required. The free version really does do the job.

Open team generator Open bracket maker

Want prettier prints? See the optional template pack