Justicia Clew: what a hackathon build teaches you that a tutorial never will
This was my first SF hackathon. I was nervous going in, and not really about the code. I was nervous I'd get put on a team I didn't pick, or worse, that I'd have to pitch myself onto one. But, I was able to build solo, phew! Turned out to be the right call for a two-day sprint where I needed to move fast and make my own calls without a group chat to sync with first.
Solo only gets you so far though. I need to build with someone eventually, just for the practice of it, doesn't have to be this project or even this kind of tool. So if anyone reading this wants to build something together sometime, my inbox is open.
Anyhow, here's what I built: Justicia Clew is a mobile-first web app that answers jury duty questions in your court's own words, not legal advice, just plain-language answers grounded in your actual county court's public website, with a real phone number when it doesn't know something instead of guessing. Built for Santa Barbara County as the live demo, on a FastAPI backend and DigitalOcean's Gradient AI agents, over about two days.
The part nobody tells you: shipping infra means un-shipping it too
