System Review
It keeps listening after help arrives — and hands what it hears to a person.
What it reads, what it never does, and who sees what. The example below is made up. The rules are the real ones.
What it reads
One thing: how someone is carrying life after help reached them, in their own words.
Once their help is marked received, the house asks 7 short questions over two months. It only asks people who agreed, when they first reached out, that we may share their information with the organizations helping them.
- Day 2
- Day 7
- Day 14
- Day 21
- Day 30
- Day 45
- Day 60
Each question waits on their check-in page, with a note by text or email when the house can send one — never between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. Central.
Every reply is read together with their first story and every answer before it. Never one answer on its own — one hard day isn’t a pattern.
What it never does
Match words to pick a service track.
It’s told to go by what a person means. Most replies point nowhere, and that’s the right answer.
Diagnose.
It isn’t asked to. It gives back a few plain words, a service track or none, how sure it is, and one sentence why. A service track is a kind of help someone could offer, not a label on a person.
Act on its own.
It sends nothing to the person and changes nothing on the case. What it noticed is written on the case page, and a person decides whether to offer anything.
Treat danger as a service track.
Crisis is checked first, before GraceBridge reads a word. More on that below.
Guess when it can’t read.
If GraceBridge is switched off in a house, or a read fails, the reply is marked for a volunteer to read directly.
The four moves
Here’s one made-up reply, start to finish: the register (how they’re carrying it), the service track (where it points), the confidence (how sure it is), and the person who decides.
One reply · four moves
Made-up example — Marisol is not a real person, and nothing here came from a real case.
The check-in · day 30
Move 1: Register — how she’s carrying it
steadier,stillcountingeverydollar
A few plain words. Never a score.
Move 2: Service Track — where it points
Financial coaching
Coaching & Counseling door
One of 9 service tracks — or none, which is the usual answer.
Move 3: Confidence — how sure it is
Written beside the service track for the volunteer. It sends nothing, and no one is paged — a medium or high read does tag the row “watch” on the leadership alert report, nothing more.
Move 4: A person decides
Nothing goes to Marisol. What GraceBridge noticed lands on her case page, on this card, and a volunteer decides whether to offer anything.
After-care journey — the walk continues
Day 30 · touch 5/7 sent · 5 answered
How they’re carrying it now: steadier, still counting every dollar
Service Track match: Financial coaching (Coaching & Counseling arm) (medium) · Her answers keep coming back to money running out before the month does. · suggestion only — a human carries the invitation
Coaching & Counseling door
Before any of that: the crisis check
Every reply is checked first against a fixed list of crisis phrases. It’s the one place we use a list, on purpose: a wrong flag costs a volunteer a few minutes, and a miss could cost far more.
If a reply matches, GraceBridge never reads it. The check-ins stop. If the house has named a person for this and texting is set up, that person gets a text right away, quiet hours or not:
GraceBridge crisis alert: case [case number] ([first name]) needs a human now. Reason: [why it fired]. Open the dashboard to respond.
That’s the whole text: a case number, a first name, and the reason. Never their words. Right now the house’s safety lock is on, so every alert goes to one verified number.
If no one is named, or texting isn’t set up, no text goes out. The case timeline says so, and the dashboard counts the case as a crisis intervention.
Where it can point
9 service tracks, each behind one of the house’s doors. The last column is word for word what GraceBridge is told to listen for — as meaning, not as words to find.
| Service Track | Door | What it listens for |
|---|---|---|
| Housing assistanceBenevolence | Benevolence | losing or about to lose a place to live; eviction, couch-surfing, living in a car; instability of shelter itself |
| Bills & essentials stabilizationBenevolence | Benevolence | a specific gap right now — a bill, groceries, a repair — without a deeper pattern behind it |
| Sobriety / recovery coachingCoaching & Counseling | Coaching & Counseling | drinking or using more than they want to; addiction in themselves; staying clean is a fight; relapse fear |
| Life coachingCoaching & Counseling | Coaching & Counseling | life feels like a mess; can't get organized; overwhelmed by everything at once with no single crisis driving it |
| Financial coachingCoaching & Counseling | Coaching & Counseling | always broke; money runs out every month; debt math at night; the same bill crisis keeps returning |
| Mental-health counselingCoaching & Counseling | Coaching & Counseling | persistent sadness, anxiety, hopeless tone WITHOUT danger language; not sleeping for reasons beyond money; 'not myself lately' |
| Pastoral counselingCoaching & Counseling | Coaching & Counseling | faith questions under the crisis; guilt or shame framed spiritually; wants to talk to a pastor, not a clinician |
| Grief counselingGrief Counseling | Grief Counseling | a death or profound loss drives the story — recent or unhealed |
| Missions partnershipMissions | Missions | a pull toward serving in the field — local or abroad — that they can't quite articulate or place |
| None | — | Most replies. Only the register is written. |
| Danger | — | Never a service track. The crisis check takes it, before GraceBridge. |
3 more service tracks on the house’s map are for churches, not people: church tech support, fundraising & events, grant writing. The check-in reader is never shown them.
Who sees what
- The person
- Their questions and a plain status, on their check-in page. Never GraceBridge’s words, the service track, how sure it was, or why.
- A signed-in volunteer
- Everything GraceBridge wrote, on the case page. The dashboard shows only counts.
- Someone on a demo link
- Made-up cases. Cases on the house’s list of real people won’t open.
- The crisis contact
- A text with a case number, a first name, and the reason. Never the person’s words.
Sources
This page describes GraceBridge’s own code. Here’s where each part lives.
src/lib/tier2.ts— the check-ins, crisis first, the read and its four answers, what gets writtensrc/lib/lanes.ts— the service tracks, what each listens for, and the routing rulessrc/lib/lane-signal.ts— the service track line on the case pagesrc/lib/cop/policy.ts— the crisis phrase listsrc/lib/cop/alert.ts— the crisis text and who it goes tosrc/lib/sequences.ts— quiet hourssrc/lib/portal-lookup.ts— what the person’s check-in page receivessrc/lib/live-cases.ts— demo links and real people’s cases
Want to watch a whole month of it instead? The Walk Line plays made-up journeys day by day.
See the Walk Line