They are handpicked by the CodePen staff or an invited guest just for that purpose. This goes for Pens, Projects, and Collections.

Why do we pick what we pick?

There is no science to it. We just pick things we like. Things we find interesting. Things we find unusual. Things we find beautiful.

Picked Pens tend to have something visual going on. If you write the most clever JavaScript sorting algorithm ever, but the result is a white page, it probably won’t be picked because an empty thumbnail looks awkward in the Trending feed.

Tips for getting your Pen seen by our pickers

The fastest way to get seen is participating in a #CodePenChallenge. Every challenge includes instructions for how to participate and how to tag your Pen so our pickers can find it.

You can make it easier for us to find your work by:

• Giving your Pen a title and description
• Adding relevant tags to the Pen
• Sharing it! Mention us in your Bluesky post about your Pen, or write about it on dev.to and give it the #codepen tag

No promises, but those are all good ways to help get your Pen in front of us.

If we pick your Pen, you’ll get a notification in your activity feed. We send the notification immediately when your Pen gets picked, but your Pen will go into a queue of picked Pens and most likely will not appear on the homepage until later in the day. It all depends on how many other Pens are in the queue ahead of yours.

If you aren’t picked, it doesn’t mean that you don’t do good work. We hope you don’t take it too personally. Making it to the Picked section might be some temporary fun, but the community you build for yourself here is the real magic.