KATRIN: Sprinting Toward Neutrino Mass

After many years of painstaking design, construction, and commissioning work, the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino experiment (KATRIN) is poised to begin taking neutrino-mass data this month. I will give a brief highlights tour of the recent commissioning campaigns that have helped us characterize and gain confidence in our apparatus, before sharing some of the remaining puzzle pieces that must be finalized for our first neutrino-mass result. I will discuss a few novel background sources, strategies for spectral fits, and a selection of systematic effects. These considerations will guide us in shaping KATRIN's future.