We don't care what stack you use, but we do care about how fast you can ship. You aren't required to use any of these, but they are the industry standards for moving quickly.

Skip the Boilerplate (Backend & Auth) Don't waste 12 hours building a custom authentication system or setting up a database from scratch. Use these to get your backend running in minutes:

• Supabase / Firebase: Open-source and quick-setup databases with built-in auth.

• Clerk: The fastest way to drop user authentication into a web app.

• Convex: A great backend-as-a-service for reactive apps.

Ship It (Hosting & Deployment) "It works on my machine" doesn't count. Your prototype needs to be live.

• Vercel / Netlify: Instant deployments for frontend frameworks.

• Railway / Render: Easiest platforms to deploy your backend, APIs, or full-stack containers.

• Ngrok: If you absolutely must run it locally but need to expose it to the web for your demo.

Build Fast (AI & UI) Use AI to write the boilerplate, but remember: you are responsible for the output. Do not submit broken AI slop. Review your code and make sure it actually functions.

• Cursor: The AI code editor that actually understands your codebase.

• v0.dev / Bolt.new: Generate UI components and scaffolding instantly so you don't spend hours fighting CSS.

• shadcn/ui & Tailwind CSS: Copy-and-paste UI components that look like a real startup out of the box.

Public Datasets If your idea relies on crunching data, don't waste time scraping.

• Kaggle Datasets: A massive repository of public data for machine learning and analytics.

• Hugging Face: The best place to find open-source models and datasets for AI projects.