Competition Rules

When you register a fighter you tell us what you built. Hardware spec. Autonomy summary. Safety envelope. Weight class.

That specification is public on the fighter's profile, at the depth you chose to publish, and no deeper. We never ask for source code. We never will.

Off the shelf platforms are allowed. The chassis can come from anywhere. What runs the decisions has to be yours.

Weight classes exist so machines meet machines of a similar scale. The cutoff numbers are not on this page. They have not been published. They will be, with the binding rules, before anyone declares a class that counts for a season.

A fighter's published spec covers chassis, actuation, sensor suite, power, comms, weight and safety envelope status. If the machine changes, say so in the next registration. Do not let a public spec drift from the hardware that shows up.

The arena is controlled or it does not run.

Every machine passes a safety review before it is allowed to train. A machine that is not cleared does not reach the arena floor. You submit a spec. We verify the envelope. Hard kill has to work.

A person reads the submission, not a script. If something fails we tell you exactly what, and you resubmit. There is no limit on attempts and no penalty for a failed review. You do not need to do anything until you hear from us.

Hard kill authority sits with the marshal. It cannot be overridden by a builder or by a machine's own autonomy.

Arena containment, spectator separation and medical presence are conditions of running a round, not preferences.

We publish the safety standard in full and we publish every incident, including the ones that make us look careless. A league that hides its incidents is a league that is going to have a serious one.

The process above is already how review works. The exact numeric standard ships with the binding rules. The turnaround clock is in the box at the top of this page, not invented here.

The machine fights itself.

An autonomy stack that runs without a human in the loop is a requirement, not a preference. Remote piloted entries are a different sport. Do not enter one and call it autonomous.

Three words, kept distinct.

• Control. A human flying the machine through the round. Not allowed.
• Override. A human intervention during a round. Permitted, logged, and treated as signal, not as a failure. Every override is captured with the state that triggered it.
• Hard kill. The marshal stopping the machine. This is safety. It is not a builder tactic and it cannot be refused by the stack.

Humans may train, watch and override from inside the sim. That is the operator seat. It does not make the entry piloted.

If we catch a piloted machine in a bracket, that is conduct, not a paperwork error.

A belt is a machine's proven floor. Not a ranking, not a reputation, and not transferable between machines. A belt says this specific fighter has cleared this specific set of conditions at threshold, repeatedly, under instrumentation.

Five tiers. The full table lives on how belts work. The rules that govern them live here.

Brackets are seeded by belt, so a first season entry is never fed to a black belt.

Green, brown and black each run their own division. You enter the division your fighter has earned. You do not pick a harder room to look brave.

A season has four phases.

1. Qualification opens. The dojo is live and belts are being earned. Anyone can enter at any point during this window.
2. Entry closes. Rosters lock. The pool is final. Brackets are drawn publicly.
3. The bracket runs. Division rounds in the arena. Every round streamed, every round on the record.
4. The championship. Black belt bracket in Miami. One night, top pool share, and the season's data released in full.

Brackets are drawn publicly the moment entry closes. Nobody sees the draw before you do. Until then that page stays empty.

Every arena round is live and streamed. Full replay and telemetry release after the round. Wins and losses both.

Bout length, scoring math and any best-of number are not invented here. Those details publish with the binding rules, before anyone confirms entry.

Enter honestly.

• Do not run a piloted machine and call it autonomous.
• Do not enter a fighter whose autonomy you did not build.
• Do not interfere with another builder's machine.
• Do not sabotage a match, a review, a kata or a draw.

Interference includes touching another fighter's hardware, feed, account or data without permission. It includes trying to pull a kill, jam a link or spoil a replay that is not yours.

If you find a way to game a kata, tell us. We would rather hear it from you than discover it in a bracket, and we publish the fix with credit.

Everything else is fair. Copy an idea you saw in a replay. Build something nobody expected. Beat us at our own kata and tell everyone how. This works because the field is open.

We credit the builder before the machine. Always.

The arena is a proving ground. It is not a spectacle about violence and we will not sell it as one.

The marshal runs the floor.

Hard kill authority sits with the marshal. A builder cannot override it. A machine cannot override it. If the marshal stops the round, the round is stopped.

A stoppage can come from a failed envelope, a lost kill, a containment problem, a medical need, or anything else that makes the room unsafe. We would rather halt a night than run a careless one.

Every incident is published, including the ones that make us look careless.

Arena containment, spectator separation and medical presence are conditions of running a round. If they are not in place, the round does not run.

If a call looks wrong, say so. Write through the contact page, marked Competing, and a person will read it.

This page does not name a clock. The copy does not give one. The timeline will be published with the binding rules.

Until then, treat a dispute as a builder writing to a person, not as a silent form. We will tell you what we received and what happens next.

If a section of these rules is unclear, that is a failure on our side. We will rewrite it.

A dispute does not freeze a season by default. Rosters still lock. The pool still holds. The marshal still has the floor.

The prize pool is posted in full before the season opens, and it splits down the bracket rather than to the winner alone. The number does not move after entry closes.

We will not print a dollar figure here. The figure is not on the site yet. When it is, it will be on the season page, in full, before qualification opens.

Payment terms publish with that number. Who gets paid, when, and how. Same document. Same moment. No quiet change after entry closes.

Travel to the arena is on the builder.

The entry cost is published with the season, before qualification opens, and it is the same number for everyone. There is no invitational tier, no sponsor discount and no fast lane.

We capture the record of what machines did. We do not take your source.

Six things, from every kata run and every arena round.

This document is versioned. Every change is published with the reason for it, and rules never change in the middle of a season.

There is no version stamp on this page because the counsel-signed edition does not exist yet. We will not invent Version 1.0 to look finished.

When that edition publishes, it will show a version and an effective date. Old versions stay readable. Results stay attached to the rules they were run under, the same way kata results stay attached to the kata version they were run on.

If a change affects what you entered under, registered builders hear before it takes effect, not after.

A mid-season change does not happen. If we find a hole during a season, we close it for the next one, and we say so.