Is it mandatory to follow a particular madhab (Hanafi), or can I follow authentic hadith instead?

So all of the madhhabs, they're all based on hadith, on Quran and Sunnah, and what they do is they extrapolate rulings based on certain principles. So it's not that they are, you know, not using the Quran or not using the Sunnah, no, rather the opposite. They're trying to make life easy for us, so that when we have rulings nowadays that were not present at the time of the Prophet ﷺ, we have principles that we can apply from the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ that we can then use to make rulings nowadays. Now, if you don't have a particular madhhab, again, it's not a problem at all. Madhhabs are generally used for when we need to study or when we're, you know, deriving these rulings. So if you don't have a madhhab, don't worry, Allah says in the Quran, فَسَلُوا أَهْلَ ذِكْرِ إِن كُنْتُمْ لَا تَعْلَمُونَ Ask somebody of knowledge, whoever that person may be that you trust, and go with their view.