What we watch, how we score, and what happens when the score rises.
Embertide runs one continuous loop, every day, for every watched member: a daily check-in lands, peer-chat tone is read for shift (not contents), the missed-touch pattern is scored, and a rising-risk signal cascades to peer sponsor, sponsor group, licensed counselor, then 988 / Crisis Text Line — in that order, with a human always answering.
Five steps, one continuous loop.
Every day, for every watched member, Embertide runs the same five stages — from the morning prompt to the overnight safety net. The sections below expand each stage in detail.
- 01
Daily check-in
A 90-second daily prompt lands, on the member’s time. Voice and SMS supported for low-bandwidth days.
- 02
Rule-based risk score
A bounded 0–100 surface fuses the three watched signals every morning — and a multi-day climb is what opens the cascade.
- 03
Routed human, in order
Peer sponsor first, sponsor group second, licensed counselor third. A licensed human is always on every rung — never a bot.
- 04
Overnight escalation
The critical window never closes. If no one engages at midnight, the cascade continues to a live 988 specialist — the safety net, not a default.
- 05
Audit trail, every read
Every score, every read, every hand-off is logged with actor and timestamp. Counselors and compliance reviewers see the same trail — and the family seat only sees the trajectory the member has consented to share.
Three signals land every day. None of them is a survey.
The watch runs on three signals, each on its own cadence. Together they fuse into the rising-risk surface a member sees at their next check-in, a peer sponsor sees in their inbox, and a clinician sees at the next visit.
- Daily check-in
A 90-second daily prompt lands in the member’s app
Sleep, craving, mood — three quick prompts a member answers on their own time. Voice and SMS variants keep the surface usable on low-bandwidth days. It is short on purpose: a watched signal that lands, not a survey they skip.
- Peer-chat tone
Peer-chat messages are read for tone, not contents
Every member-to-member message in the sponsor-group chat is scored for tone — short answers, settled language, length-of-reply — without ever exposing the message body to the model. The signal is “the conversation shifted”, not “they said what”.
- Missed-touch signal
A day without a touch is a watched day, not a quiet one
A missed check-in is not silence — it is the morning’s loudest signal. Embertide watches the gap between touches and treats two missed days the way a clinician would: as the start of a window, not as an absence to ignore until it is too late.
Three bands, one daily update, no surprises.
Every morning, the model fuses the three watched signals into one 0–100 surface. Lower is steadier; a multi-day climb is the rising-risk window the cascade responds to. The band on the right shows a typical member — baseline sleep and mood hold steady, daily check-ins spike on the same hour, and the risk-score band climbs across the weekend. No member identifiers beyond the cohort-mask — this is an aggregate shape, not a person.
A representative week for one watched member — baseline (sleep, mood), the daily check-in spike (the 90-second prompt landing), and the rising-risk score band (climb across the weekend). Real numbers per member, aggregate shape here.
Refreshed every morning
The score rolls forward at check-in time; yesterday’s value is the floor, not a ceiling.
0–100, with a 72-hour window
A multi-day climb — not a single-day spike — is what triggers the cascade. Single bad days do not page the responder chain.
Every read is logged with actor
Counselors and compliance reviewers read from the same audit trail — who saw the trajectory, and when.
Four rungs. A human on every rung. 988 last, not first.
When the rising-risk surface climbs across a 72-hour window, the cascade opens. Every rung below is the same wording the AI assistant surfaces to the member in real time — the watch and the conversation read from the same routing tiers.
- Rung 01
Peer sponsor
A peer on the member’s chain
- Rung 02
Sponsor group
The room already in their life
- Rung 03
Licensed counselor
State-licensed, telehealth, on call
- Rung 04
988 · Crisis Text Line
Safety net · window close
The cascade is a sequence — each rung only fires after the prior rung has not engaged inside its window. Family is not on this chain; the family seat receives only the trajectory the member consented to share.
| Rung | Who answers | What happens | Window |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Peer sponsor | A peer in long-term recovery from NA, AA, SMART Recovery, or a similar network — the person already in the member’s circle and the fastest to reach. The hand-off is a real voice, not a bot. | Reached in under 60s |
| 02 | Sponsor group | If the peer sponsor hasn’t acked within the critical window, the message fans out to the member’s sponsor-group room — the same peers who already know the member’s history. | Window open · ~3 min |
| 03 | Licensed counselor | A state-licensed telehealth counselor — medication-assisted-treatment familiar and on call. Counselors are the rung where the watch tips from “peered” to “clinically observed”, with full context envelope attached. | Engages in ~6 min |
| 04 | 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline · Crisis Text Line | If the critical window closes with no human-engaged, Embertide hands the member to a live 988 specialist (or texts HOME to 741741 for the Crisis Text Line) — the safety net, not a default. A 911 hand-off only happens at the moment a licensed human on the chain declares imminent physical danger. | Safety net · window close |
Where family fits: families are not on the responder chain — the family seat receives only the trajectory the member has consented to share, on a calmer cadence. Family sees the trajectory, not the raw check-in stream — and the audit trail records every access. The watch is the responder, not you.
Your named circle of trust. The people you name on your safety plan are your named circle of trust — peer sponsor, sponsor group, licensed counselor, then 988 as the safety net — prioritized in the order you built them on day one and never reordered behind your back.
The critical window never closes — the cascade continues overnight.
Recovery does not stop at 5pm. Neither does the watch. When the rising-risk window is still open at 2am and no one on rungs 01–03 has engaged, Embertide hands the member to a live 988 specialist (or texts HOME to 741741 for the Crisis Text Line) — with the full context envelope attached. The safety net is a human, not a bot and not a default.
The window does not close at midnight
A 72-hour climb watched at 11:59pm is the same 72-hour climb at 12:01am. The on-call responder chain runs in the same order, on the same clocks.
Peer sponsor → sponsor group → counselor → 988
Overnight escalation is not a different cascade. It is the same cascade with the same rungs in the same order — the timing reference in the routing table above applies 24/7.
The 988 specialist opens the envelope
When the rung-04 hand-off lands, the specialist inherits the trajectory, the score band, the active trigger window, and the responder chain timestamps — not a redacted handoff.
Every read is logged, every hand-off has actor and timestamp.
The audit trail is stage 05 — and it is the reason the first four stages are trusted. Counselors, compliance reviewers, and the family seat all read from the same per-member row scope: the trajectory, the actor who opened it, and the wall-clock timestamp the read happened. Family never sees the raw check-in stream — only the trajectory the member consented to share.
What the audit trail records, per hand-off
- Auditor sees the same trail
- Counselors and compliance reviewers read from the same per-member row scope. There is no second source of truth.
- Per-member, trajectory-only for family
- Family seats see only the trajectory the member consented to share — never the raw check-in stream or peer-chat bodies.
- Every read has actor + timestamp
- Every score, every read, every hand-off is logged with the actor (who opened it) and a wall-clock timestamp (when it happened).
If you run a recovery network, this is the watch that closes the gap.
Send your cohort size, your responder chain, and a short note on what “before the dark hour” means for your panel. We’ll come back with a 90-day pilot scope and the audit-trail surface your reviewer will want to see.
Running this for an outpatient MAT/OAT clinic instead? See /for-mat-oat-clinics →
Spec'ing this for a peer-recovery organization instead? See /for-peer-recovery-organizations →
Procuring this for a commercial health plan instead? See /for-insurers →
Running this for a state Medicaid program or MCO partner instead? See /for-state-medicaid-programs →
What to send
- · Cohort size and clinical profile
- · Existing responder chain (peer, sponsor, counselor, 988)
- · Your 90-day success metric
- · The dark-hour window you want closed first