Bellingcat Open Source Challenge (Archived)

This was the site architecture that ran the Bellingcat challenge until July 2026 (without the challenge content).

The key features are:

• The site is staticly hosted, and is rebuilt as often as needed (currently daily)

• A challenge is published at a specified date

• A challenge consists of sequential puzzles

• Within a challenge, all puzzles after the first can initially be locked

• A player can unlock a puzzle by answering the previous one, or waiting for it to unlock.

• Puzzles unlock automatically at a given date

• Each puzzle is specified in a markdown file

• The markdown file contains metadata to associate with a particular challenge, unlock date, etc

• The main body of the file can be encrypted

Usage

To build the public directory of puzzles (./puzzles/) from the raw puzzles (./puzzles_raw/), use:

npm run prebuild

For development, use:

npm run dev

Build with

npm run build

and test the build with

npm run preview

Finally, format with Prettier by using:

npm run format