404Found | Devpost

Titile Page
Adding a credit card statement

Inspiration

We live in a world where personal data has become currency—bought, sold, and passed along without our consent. We’ve all faced those gut-wrenching moments: signing up for a service only to see a surge of spam, or—worse—finding out your private details are up for grabs on the dark web. The anxiety of chasing leaks, untangling cryptic statements, and fighting invisible data brokers is overwhelming.

Our project began as both an act of frustration—and of hope. What if the script could be flipped? What if, instead of being powerless, a regular person could summon a network of digital allies to hunt down leaks, rescue their privacy, and champion their financial wellbeing—all in just a few clicks?

What it does

404Found is a deeply personal AI platform, acting as both your privacy guardian and your personal finance coach. Picture this: you upload your monthly statement, and instantly an army of Fetch.AI agents springs into action. They:

• OCR-scan your statements, • analyze and categorize every spending decision, • flag companies known for risky practices or data-selling, • teach you safer and smarter money habits, • and—most powerfully—prepare and send privacy requests for you, so your data rights are actively enforced.

But that’s not all. 404Found helps you set savings goals, intelligently cut waste, and even highlights subscriptions or spending patterns you could cancel or optimize. By merging personal finance and cyber defense, 404Found relieves anxiety and empowers you to actively shape your digital and financial future.

The Story Behind the Build

This journey was an emotional roller coaster. Driven by the dream of “full automation,” we set out to build a totally hands-off engine—but reality hit hard: the world of privacy and finance is messy and there’s always a need for that “final user touch.” Luckily, hitting this wall led to a valuable pivot: instead of chasing unattainable perfection, we shifted to a “last click” model. Now, users have the ultimate say—but the AI does 99% of the heavy lifting. This wasn’t just a workaround; it opened the door to new features, more transparency, and ways for users to explore workflows and personalize their privacy and finance journey.

Here’s how we built it:

• Fetch.AI Agentverse: Created a society of specialized AI agents (for OCR, classification, financial coaching, privacy enforcement), all working together through natural language and autonomous decision-making. • Tesseract OCR & PyMuPDF: Extracted data even from the toughest scanned receipts and PDFs. • Gemini AI: Made advice and communication human—drafting messages to companies about privacy or giving relatable financial tips. • MongoDB: Ensured that all data stays structured, private, and always under user control.

Every piece was built not just to automate, but to empower—to transform stress and chaos into clear options, real action, and peace of mind.

Challenges We Overcame

• Orchestrating many agents to work together for real-time, cross-domain action. • Ensuring data privacy within modern, cloud-based architectures. • Wrestling with dependency chaos in containerized builds. • Refusing to let smart AI become a black box—giving users transparency and the “final click.”

Accomplishments We’re Proud Of

• Creating a system where AI agents genuinely collaborate—fail one, and the others step up. • Building end-to-end automation that stretches from a messy PDF to a true, actionable privacy request (or a canceled subscription!). • Empowering users to not just patch holes, but actively win back control over both money and data.

What We Learned

• How agents can improvise, specialize, and truly “team up” for the user. • How to combine care for both privacy and finances into one supportive platform. • That impact comes from blending cutting-edge tech with a real passion for user empowerment.

The Future of 404Found

We dream of a world where digital privacy (and financial security) is a right, not a privilege. Next for 404Found: • Reinforcement learning for agents, adapting to new threats and financial patterns in real time. • Expanding our multi-agent model—so agent communities can pool knowledge and help more people, faster. • Blockchain-based audit trails so you (and only you) can track every privacy action, forever. • Becoming the all-in-one privacy, security, and savings companion—coaching you, protecting you, and celebrating your wins.

Most importantly? We want to replace that feeling of powerlessness with confidence, clarity, and hope—for as many people as possible, everywhere.

Because we know how it feels to be lost in the noise. And that’s exactly why we built 404Found.