One answer from messy data

Constraint. Data sat in pieces. People who needed a picture did not have one. The event did not give us months. It gave us a track and a jury.

Decision. Build a thin system that reads the data you have, not the data you wish you had. Show one useful output a partner could act on. Skip the extra dashboards.

Artifact. VESTA: an AI-assisted path from fragments to a next step. First place on that track. Industry judges. The demo is available on request — we do not pretend it is a live bank product.

Lesson. This is a case of a public build, not a paid delivery over a year. A franchise operator should not treat a hackathon trophy as proof we will keep their branches running. It is proof we can finish a hard, timed brief.