Building LocalMate at Hack Winterthur

A few weeks back me and @meritonaliu walked into Hack Winterthur 2026 as two CS students from ZHAW. We walked out the winners, being able to provide actual results: Winterthurs LocalMate: A digital assistant that builds the bridge between information and the people that need it . In this blog I want to outline the story of how it happened, why it matters to us personally, and whats under the hood. The Challenge The City of Winterthur proposed a straight forward problem: They want to strengthen the communication between their local government and the people they govern. A simple problem in theory, but in practice something that is hard to implement: People get lost in the infinite amount of documents, regulations and the complex German. This problem isn't abstract to us. We know what it's like. Why this is personal We both grew up in Zürich as the children of migrants. We watched everyone around us struggle with letters they couldn't fully understand, systems that assume familiarity wit