we went through three hackathons back to back: Aiboomi, Reactor.inc, and Agent Arena. at that point, sleep was less of a schedule and more of a negotiation with our bodies.
somewhere in the middle of it, we put together Prometheus, a framework that became the base for the next thing and then the next thing after that. it was not elegant. it was useful. every new idea had somewhere to land instead of starting from an empty fucking folder.
hackathons are loud, and half the advice there is noise. the actual lesson was simple: when the next deadline comes, a working base beats a perfect new idea every time.