Proof of Code

Inspiration

Recent advancements in AI have upended computer science education. Coding assignments can be trivialized by tools like Copilot or Claude Code, and while some students are less than prudent in their use of these newfound powers, it is not always easy for instructors to tell if someone is cheating. For honest students, this means facing false accusations and being at a disadvantage relative to their peers. For instructors, it means constant suspicion and the loss of the ability to gauge students' abilities outside paper exams. To rectify this, we present Proof of Code, which aims to ensure fairness in coding assignments and to provide instructors with a way to more accurately detect academic dishonesty.

What it does

Proof of Code consists of a VSCode extension and a website. The extension records a user’s edits in real time and sends them to a server hosted by the instructors. Anomalous events, such as sudden large additions, are automatically flagged, and the student’s edit history can then be played back in real time for instructor review.

How we built it

The VSCode extension is built by recording text document change events and streaming them to an ingest server, which logs them. It only records events when there is a .submit file, so it will not affect someone’s day-to-day coding for projects outside of class.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into challenges with unexpected UI and CSS behavior, making it difficult to get the project's aesthetic right. Additionally, detecting cheating from edit history alone is difficult due to many edge cases, such as students copying their own code across files.