# Nearhand

- **Event:** [Meta Global AI Developer Hackathon](https://cerebralvalley.ai/e/meta-ai-developer-hackathon)
- **When:** Oct 26, 12:00 PM – Nov 4, 9:00 PM (EST)
- **Where:** Online
- **Team:** [Sri Vamsi Voleti](https://cerebralvalley.ai/u/shadowmonarch)
- **GitHub:** https://github.com/vamsivoleti25/NearHand
- **Demo video:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jrO5ofsCVo
- **Gallery:** https://cerebralvalley.ai/e/meta-ai-developer-hackathon/hackathon/gallery
- **Page:** https://cerebralvalley.ai/e/meta-ai-developer-hackathon/hackathon/gallery/3457

Nearhand is scheduling for small businesses, with an AI agent that fills open shifts from the neighborhood.

The problem: when someone calls out sick, a café or restaurant owner fixes it by texting around while serving customers, and every unfilled shift costs sales. Big chains have workforce software; a ten-person café has a group chat.

How it works:
• The owner writes the week's rules the way they'd say them ("@Maya off Tuesdays, a keyholder at every open and close"). Muse Spark Open turns them into typed rules shown as chips the owner can check and untick, and asks a question when a rule is unclear.
• OR-Tools CP-SAT builds the cheapest week that follows every rule: quarter-hour shifts, money in integer cents, overtime, rest between shifts, required skills.
• A gap-filling agent (Muse Spark Open with tool calling) fills the open shifts. It searches the neighborhood, asks the optimizer, tries what-ifs such as giving a team member extra hours, and skips the ones that cost more. It asks the business's own team first, then qualified part-timers nearby. Every number it writes is checked against the optimizer before the owner sees it, and nothing is booked until each person says yes.
• Everyone answers on their phone. When someone declines, the agent offers the shift to the next-best person on its own. "Should I take this?" gives a worker an honest second opinion checked against their calendar, weekly max, pay and distance.
• Workers have a voice: a chat message like "can I leave at 3 instead of 5?" becomes a checked, one-click shift change, and the agent re-offers the hours they gave up.
• A sick call is one sentence: "Chris called out sick Thursday" reopens his shift and the agent finds cover.

The model talks; the optimizer decides. The model never assigns shifts or computes money; code does, and hard limits (calendar clashes, weekly maximums) are enforced in code.

Proof: an eval harness checks every model job against known answers. Rules read exactly right 25/25; the agent matched the optimizer's coverage in 10/10 test weeks (within 1% of its cost) at about 2.6¢ per plan; offer advice right 20/20 with no unsafe "take it". 111 automated tests, including full runs for a café and a full-service restaurant.

Try it with no sign-up: https://nearhand.streamlit.app ("Take the 2-minute tour", or "See it on their phone" to answer as a worker). All people and businesses in the demo are fictional. Built during the hackathon, Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2026.

## More from Meta Global AI Developer Hackathon

- [TraceForm](https://cerebralvalley.ai/e/meta-ai-developer-hackathon/hackathon/gallery/3454)
- [ASCII](https://cerebralvalley.ai/e/meta-ai-developer-hackathon/hackathon/gallery/3455)
- [Amos Kanyanta](https://cerebralvalley.ai/e/meta-ai-developer-hackathon/hackathon/gallery/3456)
- [Sentinel AI](https://cerebralvalley.ai/e/meta-ai-developer-hackathon/hackathon/gallery/3458)
- [Taskforce 141](https://cerebralvalley.ai/e/meta-ai-developer-hackathon/hackathon/gallery/3459)
- [Mihiretu (Didymos) Likassa](https://cerebralvalley.ai/e/meta-ai-developer-hackathon/hackathon/gallery/3460)

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Markdown version of https://cerebralvalley.ai/e/meta-ai-developer-hackathon/hackathon/gallery/3457. Site index for agents: https://cerebralvalley.ai/llms.txt · full text: https://cerebralvalley.ai/llms-full.txt