orchestrate-phase-gateslisted

# Orchestrate Phase Gates HackerRank Orchestrate scores four independent artifacts, and the published post-mortem of the May 2026 event found that **no single metric reproduced the leaderboard** — the winners were balanced across all four, not exceptional at one. That single fact should drive your entire time allocation, because the instinct under time pressure is to sink everything into code and treat the other three as afterthoughts. That is the losing strategy, mathematically: code is only 30%. ## The scored surface (from HackerRank's published breakdown) | Artifact | Weight | What it actually measures | |---|---|---| | Code zip | 30% | Agent design, architecture, tool integration, prompt quality, robustness, engineering standards | | Output CSV | 30% | Functional correctness vs. a golden dataset — **and the soundness of each decision's justification** | | AI chat transcript | 10% | How you *directed* your AI coding tools — planning, constraints, debugging, iteration | | AI judge interview | 30% | Technical depth, problem understanding, communication clarity, **self-awareness about limitations** | Two implications people miss: 1. **70% of the score is not your code.** Output quality, your transcript, and a live interview dominate. Budget time accordingly — a common failure is arriving at hour 23 with elegant code, an unreviewed CSV, and no interview prep. 2. **Justifications are scored, not just actions.** The CSV isn't a pure correctness check. A right answer with in