Hope: an anonymous AI service navigator for Sacramento
Hope helps a person in need, or their case worker, find local help in Sacramento, California. They describe the situation in plain words and get a step-by-step plan to food, shelter, health care and other services. Hope is a project of Hope Inc, a Sacramento nonprofit. It's labeled as pilot software, its public pages are offered in several languages including Spanish, and it doesn't replace 911, 988 or 211. Visit hope.us.com.
An anonymous AI service navigator: a person describes their situation and gets a step-by-step plan to local services in Sacramento.
What we built
Story intake by voice or text, with no accounts and no names stored
Deterministic crisis pre-screen and a scoring engine, with a 211 backstop
AI plan writing with fallback between Claude and Gemini, plus a no-AI template path
Admin portal for verifying programs, importing data and monitoring changes
Next.js
PostgreSQL (Neon)
Anthropic Claude API
Gemini API
Netlify
Private by design
People who need help shouldn't have to give up their privacy to get it, so Hope works without accounts.
Story intake by voice or text, with no sign-up
No names are stored, and the narrative is never saved
Location is used to rank nearby services but is never stored
Confidential sites are never shown on a map
How the plan is built
A deterministic crisis pre-screen runs first. A scoring engine then weighs urgency, eligibility, feasibility and how fresh each program's information is. Results are ranked by distance and walk time. If nothing fits, the plan points to 211 so no one hits a dead end.
AI with a fallback
AI extracts the details from the person's description and writes the plan, with fallback between Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini. If no AI is available, a deterministic template path still produces a plan. The AI helps with language; the crisis pre-screen and the scoring don't depend on it.
Admin portal and delivery
Staff keep the program data accurate from an admin portal. One engine ships three ways: a full Next.js app, a single-file version and an embeddable widget.
Program verification queue with call scripts
Program editor and importers for HSDS feeds and web-page extraction
A daily change monitor
An anonymous plan-quality log and an AI copilot
Per-user logins for staff
Stack and services
Next.js with PostgreSQL on Neon, the Anthropic Claude API and the Gemini API, deployed on Netlify.
No. Hope is a guide to local services. In an emergency, call 911. In a mental health crisis, call or text 988. For general help finding services, 211 is available, and Hope points to it when nothing else fits.
What happens if the AI is unavailable?
Hope keeps working. A deterministic template path builds the plan without AI, and the crisis pre-screen and scoring never depended on AI in the first place.
How is personal information protected?
There are no accounts, no names are stored, the narrative is never saved, and the location used for ranking isn't stored either.
Can other organizations embed Hope?
The engine also ships as an embeddable widget and a single-file version, so it can run inside another organization's website.
