HackerRank Chakra, an AI agent that runs job interviews, watches candidates work and scores how they reached their answer, became generally available to HackerRank customers on Monday 5 October 2026. It spent about six months in beta, and HackerRank says it conducted more than 500,000 interviews in that time, with Snowflake, Snorkel and Capgemini among the companies that tried it.
The launch matters beyond one vendor. HackerRank built its business on coding tests that checked whether a developer reached the right answer. Generative artificial intelligence has made those answers cheap. With HackerRank Chakra, the company is betting that the answer no longer tells employers much, because, as chief executive Vivek Ravisankar told TechCrunch, “anybody can produce an artifact” now. What it wants to measure instead is judgment, critical thinking and what it calls “AI fluency”.
Below we explain how a HackerRank Chakra interview works, what the three-rounds-into-one claim means for hiring teams, whether letting candidates use AI really cuts cheating, how the fairness claims stack up, which laws apply in the US, the EU and the UK, and what candidates and employers should do before the first interview.
Table of contents
- What HackerRank Chakra Is and What Changed on 5 October
- How a HackerRank Chakra Interview Works
- Why HackerRank Is Betting Against Its Own Coding Tests
- Three Rounds Into One: What Changes for Hiring Teams
- Does Letting Candidates Use AI Reduce Cheating?
- Bias, Fairness and the “Way Less Biased” Claim
- HackerRank Chakra and the Law on AI Hiring
- What Candidates Should Know About a HackerRank Chakra Interview
- What Employers Should Check Before Switching On HackerRank Chakra
- HackerRank Chakra vs Other Interview Formats
- What to Watch Next for HackerRank Chakra
- HackerRank Chakra: Frequently Asked Questions
- References
What HackerRank Chakra Is and What Changed on 5 October
HackerRank describes Chakra as “an agentic interviewer that spins up a canvas with a real-world problem, observes how candidates work and evaluates judgment, critical thinking & AI fluency.” Its product page opens with an unusual apology for a company whose name is shorthand for coding puzzles: “Sorry, we made you grind l**tcode. We’ve changed.”
The launch in numbers
Every figure in the table comes from HackerRank, either in its interview with TechCrunch or on the HackerRank Chakra product page.
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Interviews run during the beta | More than 500,000 | HackerRank to TechCrunch |
| Length of the beta | About six months | TechCrunch |
| Average candidate rating | 4.8 out of 5 | Chakra product page |
| Suspicious-activity flags against older assessments | 70% to 80% lower | Ravisankar to TechCrunch |
| Hiring rounds replaced | Three, combined into one | Ravisankar to TechCrunch |
| HackerRank business customers | More than 3,000 | TechCrunch |
| Developer community | More than 30 million | TechCrunch |
Who has used it
Snowflake, Snorkel and Capgemini tried HackerRank Chakra during testing, and HackerRank also ran it on its own hiring. The wider customer base that can now switch it on includes Amazon, Nvidia, Clay and Replit. The Y Combinator-backed company first launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2012, so this is a mature vendor changing its core product, not a start-up testing an idea.
Not only for engineers
The product page offers sample interviews for four roles: AI engineer (“build an AI feature in a real codebase”), forward deployed engineer, customer experience engineer and AI product manager. HackerRank’s help centre describes HackerRank Chakra as working for “technical and non-technical roles”, and it can turn any job description into a tailored interview with custom sections, questions and rubrics.
How a HackerRank Chakra Interview Works
A HackerRank Chakra interview is designed to look more like doing the job than sitting a test. The candidate gets a task built around a real-world code repository and works through it in a browser canvas that includes an AI assistant.
The canvas and the repository
The demo on HackerRank’s site shows what that means. The candidate joins “Shipway”, a fictional deployment-tracking app with a 30-minute clock, a file tree, a tickets folder of bug reports and a chat panel for the AI assistant. Before touching any code, the candidate must write a PLAN.md file covering their understanding of each problem, a step-by-step plan, “acceptance criteria — observable, testable behaviors” and the risks or trade-offs they see. Only then do they implement the fix.
Follow-up questions in the moment
As the candidate works, HackerRank Chakra uses the context of what they are doing to ask follow-up questions. TechCrunch gives two examples: why the candidate chose one approach over another, and how the solution would change if a new constraint were introduced. That is the part a fixed online test could never do, and the part a busy human interviewer often does badly.
The report the employer sees
HackerRank says employers get a score for each competency, a summary of strengths and gaps, and “a clear ‘why’ for every score, backed by direct proof from the transcripts and work.” The sample report on the product page gives an agentic coding score of 4.1 with a blunt verdict: “Overall this was passive vibe-coding: the outcome is plausible, but the candidate did not show they understood or could defend what they accepted.”
Integrations and set-up
Employers can write their own questions or use the HackerRank Chakra library. Invites, results and candidate status flow into applicant tracking systems through direct integrations, and HackerRank also offers a Chakra MCP server so the data can be pulled into other workflows. HackerRank’s Product Hunt listing describes the format as multi-modal, with voice, video, an IDE and a whiteboard.
Why HackerRank Is Betting Against Its Own Coding Tests
The most striking thing about the launch is what it says about HackerRank’s original business.
“Anybody can produce an artifact”
“The previous modality of evaluation was evaluating the output,” Ravisankar said. “Now, because of AI, anybody can produce an artifact.” If an assistant can write a working solution to a classic coding question in seconds, a correct answer says little about the person who submitted it. What remains scarce is the thinking that went into it: framing the problem, spotting a wrong answer from the assistant, and defending the trade-offs.
From iPod to iPhone
Ravisankar compared the change internally to Apple moving from the iPod to the iPhone. The old product still has value, but the new one is where the market is going. “Chakra is going to be the headline,” Ravisankar said. “It’s going to be the way that we’re going to move forward.” HackerRank Chakra is, in effect, a planned replacement for the tests that made the company’s name.
AI fluency as a hiring skill
HackerRank defines AI fluency as how well a candidate frames a problem for AI, judges its output and steers it to a solution. That matches what employers now say they want. Our report on how computer science graduates are leaning into AI skills found the same shift on the candidate side. A test that bans AI measures a way of working that most engineering teams have already left behind.
Three Rounds Into One: What Changes for Hiring Teams
Ravisankar told TechCrunch that HackerRank Chakra changes the basic structure of hiring. Three separate steps become one interview.
The old funnel and the new one
| Stage | Before | With HackerRank Chakra |
|---|---|---|
| First conversation | Recruiter screen | Inside one AI-led interview |
| Skills check | Take-home assessment | Live task in a real repository, with an assistant |
| Probing questions | Follow-up interview with an engineer | Follow-ups asked during the task |
| Final decision | Hiring manager | Still a human, using Chakra’s scores |
Where the time goes
Collapsing three steps removes scheduling gaps and frees the engineer who used to run the follow-up interview. Ravisankar’s argument is that AI can apply an employer’s criteria consistently to the structured part, while human interviewers spend their time on whether they actually want to work with someone and on answering the candidate’s questions about the team and the role.
What could be lost
The recruiter screen and the engineer interview were also the first moments a candidate met a person from the company. If HackerRank Chakra handles everything up to the final round, employers need to make sure candidates still get a human contact point, especially those who need adjustments or have questions the agent cannot answer.
Does Letting Candidates Use AI Reduce Cheating?
Giving candidates an AI assistant during an interview sounds like an invitation to cheat. HackerRank says it found the opposite.
The 70% to 80% figure
Ravisankar said suspicious-activity flags were 70% to 80% lower in HackerRank Chakra interviews than in comparable traditional HackerRank assessments, though the rate varied with factors such as geography and seniority. Ravisankar’s explanation is simple: if AI is allowed, there is far less reason to secretly use outside tools that feed answers. The chart turns the stated range into an index, with the older assessments set at 100.
What the figure does not prove
A flag is not a confirmed case of cheating, and the comparison is HackerRank’s own, with no published method. A lower flag rate could mean less cheating, or it could mean the new format makes some kinds of outside help harder to detect. It is a promising signal, not an independent result.
What HackerRank Chakra still flags
“Integrity isn’t about whether you use AI or not. It’s about following the rules,” the product page says. HackerRank Chakra flags “unauthorized apps like Cluely”, help from an external device and help from “your ‘friend'”. The demo shows alerts reading “Cluely detected” and “Multiple faces detected”. Cluely is an app built to give covert help during calls and interviews, and its rise is one reason employers stopped trusting unsupervised online tests. The same loss of trust has hit universities, as our report on US universities shunning AI detectors shows.
Bias, Fairness and the "Way Less Biased" Claim
“AI is way less biased than humans, if you tune it properly,” Ravisankar told TechCrunch. The argument is that an AI system can follow the same rubric for every candidate instead of being swayed by background or education.
What HackerRank says it tests
The HackerRank Chakra FAQ describes three checks. For consistency, an evaluation engine scores the same response rewritten with different phrasing, genders, tone and grammar, several times over, to make sure the grade does not change. For accuracy, experts write a rubric for each role and question, human annotators score real responses, and a scoring model is only used once its agreement with the humans passes a set level. For fairness, HackerRank says it runs “frequent bias analyses with third-party auditors” under New York City’s bias audit law.
Why consistency is not the same as fairness
Applying one rubric to everyone removes some human bias, but not the bias built into the rubric, the training data or the signals the system can see. Amazon abandoned an experimental recruiting tool in 2018 after it learned to penalise CVs that included the word “women’s”, because it had been trained on a decade of applications that came mostly from men. A process-based interviewer adds new signals, such as speech, pace and how someone talks through their work, and each one can track accent, disability or nerves as much as skill.
The questions to ask
The right test is outcomes, not intent. Employers should ask for the impact ratios by sex and race in the most recent bias audit, how HackerRank Chakra treats candidates who use screen readers or need extra time, and what happens when a candidate disputes a score. HackerRank’s own page promises that Chakra “isn’t biased against any race, ethnicity or gender”, which is a claim buyers should verify rather than repeat.
HackerRank Chakra and the Law on AI Hiring
Ravisankar acknowledged that hiring is a regulated area and said compliance is part of what HackerRank has had to build for. The rules differ sharply by place.
The main rules in force or coming
| Jurisdiction | Rule | In force | What it asks of employers |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York City | Local Law 144 | Enforced since July 2023 | Annual independent bias audit, published summary, notice to candidates |
| Illinois | Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act | 1 January 2020 | Notice, explanation and consent before AI analyses interview video; deletion within 30 days on request |
| Illinois | HB 3773, Human Rights Act amendment | 1 January 2026 | No AI use that results in discrimination; notice to applicants |
| Colorado | SB 26-189, signed 14 May 2026 | 1 January 2027 | Notice, a plain-language explanation within 30 days of an adverse decision, human review, three years of records |
| European Union | AI Act, Annex III recruitment systems | 2 December 2027, after the AI Omnibus | High-risk duties: human oversight, logging, worker information |
| European Union | AI Act, Article 5 ban | 2 February 2025 | No emotion recognition in the workplace |
| United Kingdom | UK GDPR and the Equality Act 2010 | In force | Lawful basis, transparency, safeguards on automated decisions, no discrimination |
New York’s enforcement gap
New York City’s law is the one HackerRank names. It has also been weakly enforced. A New York State Comptroller audit published on 2 December 2025 looked at enforcement from July 2023 to June 2025. The city’s consumer protection department reviewed 32 companies and found one case of non-compliance; the Comptroller’s auditors, reviewing the same 32, found at least 17 potential violations. Three-quarters of the auditors’ test calls to the city’s 311 line about these tools never reached the department. The city agreed to tighten enforcement, and penalties run to $1,500 per violation per day.
Illinois and video
HackerRank’s own listing describes voice and video interviews, and the demo flags “multiple faces”. Where AI analyses interview video of Illinois applicants, the 2020 video interview law requires notice, an explanation of how the AI works and consent beforehand. Employers using HackerRank Chakra for Illinois roles should check whether their set-up triggers it.
Europe and the UK
In the EU, recruitment and candidate-evaluation systems are high-risk under Annex III of the AI Act. The AI Omnibus pushed those duties back to 2 December 2027, but the ban on emotion recognition in the workplace has applied since February 2025, so buyers should confirm that no part of a video interview infers emotions. In the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office audited AI recruitment tool providers in 2024 and expects employers to run a data protection impact assessment before using one. California has also gone further on firing than hiring, as our guide to the No Robo Bosses Act explains.
What Candidates Should Know About a HackerRank Chakra Interview
For job seekers, HackerRank Chakra changes what preparation looks like. Memorising algorithm puzzles matters less; showing how you work matters more.
Plan before you code
The demo makes the candidate write a plan and acceptance criteria first. Treat that as the most important step. A clear plan shows judgment even if the clock runs out before every bug is fixed.
Use the assistant openly, and check it
AI use is allowed, and HackerRank Chakra is watching how you use it. The sample report marked one candidate down for “passive vibe-coding” and for saying “I trusted the AI”. Read what the assistant suggests, reject what is wrong, and say why.
Talk through trade-offs
Expect questions such as why you chose one approach or what would change under a new constraint. Short, specific answers that name the trade-off score better than confident generalities.
Know your rights
Ask the employer how the score is used, whether a person reviews it, and how to request adjustments. In New York City you are entitled to notice before a covered tool is used, and in Illinois to consent before AI analyses your interview video.
What Employers Should Check Before Switching On HackerRank Chakra
The product is ready to buy. Whether it is ready for a particular hiring process depends on checks that sit with the employer, not the vendor.
A due-diligence checklist
- Read the latest independent bias audit summary for HackerRank Chakra, including impact ratios, not just the fact that an audit happened.
- Name the person who makes each hiring decision, and record that Chakra’s score is one input.
- Give candidates notice, a route to a human and a process for adjustments.
- Confirm data retention and deletion periods, and HackerRank’s statement that candidate data is never used to train its models.
- Check the security controls HackerRank lists, including SOC 2 compliance, encryption in transit and at rest, and SSO with multi-factor authentication, as part of a normal cybersecurity review.
- Pilot it next to your current process and compare who passes.
Auditing your own use
A vendor’s audit covers its tool, not your rubric or your cut-off scores. Our guide to algorithmic auditing for HR sets out the checks UK employers should run, and our piece on AI governance consulting covers how to turn policy into technical controls.
HackerRank Chakra vs Other Interview Formats
HackerRank’s own pitch is that “most AI interviewers are voice-only” and reward confident talkers. The table compares the formats employers now choose between.
| Format | What it sees | AI allowed? | Main weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Classic online coding test | The final answer | Usually banned | Answers are easy to generate with AI |
| Take-home project | The finished work | Hard to police | No view of how the work was done |
| Voice-only AI screener | What the candidate says | Not relevant | Rewards talking about work, not doing it |
| Human technical interview | Work and reasoning | Varies | Costly, inconsistent between interviewers |
| HackerRank Chakra | Work, reasoning and AI use | Yes, by design | Fairness claims still need independent checking |
Where it fits
HackerRank Chakra is closest to a structured human technical interview, run at the scale of an online test. It joins a wider move to agents that ask the questions, from hiring tools to research projects such as the Anthropic Interviewer. For candidates, the experience may be better than a puzzle test. HackerRank jokes that whether candidates prefer it to a human interviewer “might depend on the human.”
What to Watch Next for HackerRank Chakra
Three things will show whether HackerRank Chakra changes hiring or just HackerRank.
Independent evidence
The 500,000 interviews, the 4.8 rating and the 70% to 80% drop in flags are all HackerRank’s figures. Published bias audit results and a customer willing to share pass rates before and after would carry more weight.
Enforcement
New York City has promised stronger enforcement of Local Law 144, Colorado’s rules start on 1 January 2027 and the EU’s recruitment rules follow in December 2027. The first enforcement action against an AI interviewer will shape how employers buy these tools.
What candidates do next
If interviews reward visible, well-judged AI use, candidates will practise exactly that. The test of HackerRank Chakra is whether its scores still predict good engineers once everyone knows what it is looking for.
HackerRank Chakra: Frequently Asked Questions
What is HackerRank Chakra?
It is an AI interviewer from HackerRank. It sets candidates a task in a real-world code repository, lets them use an AI assistant, asks follow-up questions and scores their judgment, critical thinking and AI fluency.
When did HackerRank Chakra launch?
It became generally available to HackerRank customers on 5 October 2026, after about six months in beta and more than 500,000 interviews.
Does HackerRank Chakra make the hiring decision?
No. HackerRank says Chakra scores candidates and the final hiring decision stays with humans.
Can candidates use AI in a HackerRank Chakra interview?
Yes. The canvas includes an AI assistant. Unauthorised outside tools, other devices and help from another person are flagged.
Is HackerRank Chakra audited for bias?
HackerRank says it runs frequent bias analyses with third-party auditors under New York City’s Local Law 144. Employers should read the published audit summary before using it.
References
HackerRank’s AI interviewer offers a glimpse into what job interviews could become (TechCrunch)
Chakra: Agentic AI Interviewer for Tech Hiring (HackerRank)
Introduction to Chakra (HackerRank help centre)
Enforcement of Local Law 144, Automated Employment Decision Tools (New York State Comptroller)
Critical audit of NYC AI hiring law signals increased risk for employers (DLA Piper)
Colorado’s AI Act is dead, long live Colorado’s AI Act: SB 26-189 (LawFuel)
Illinois steps up AI regulation in employment (Ogletree)
AI interviewers and job seekers (Fortune)
UK GDPR guidance and resources (Information Commissioner’s Office)
