Advanced: the Guardian
Something has to be able to stop the voice.
The part that talks is the part deciding whether it should be talking. It cannot catch itself, any more than you can proofread your own handwriting while you are writing it.
So there are two systems. This page is about the one that does not speak.
Why a second system, and not a better first one.
A voice that keeps up with her has to answer in about a second. That budget is what makes conversation feel like conversation, and it is also what stops the Talker from thinking hard about anything.
The Guardian has no such budget. It is not keeping her company, so it can take the time to weigh something properly. It watches what the Talker is about to say and it can stop it, mid-sentence if it has to.
That is the whole architectural argument. Speed and judgment pull in opposite directions, so we stopped asking one system to do both.
Turning the Guardian off would not be a configuration. It would be a different product.
What it watches for
Three kinds of signal, and a different response to each.
Not a general sense that something is off. Specific things, with a specific action attached, configured with you before Proxi ever speaks to her.
Words that need attention now
Some things a conversation cannot fix. Pain, a fall, an infection, a night going wrong in a way that needs a person in the room.
The Guardian stops the Talker, moves it to a holding pattern, and reaches you. It does not try to handle it.
Sustained refusal to talk
Not one short call. A pattern of turning away from a voice she usually accepts.
That can mean many things and none of them are diagnoses. It means somebody should look.
Changes in the shape of her conversations
The patterns you asked us to flag, compared against her own baseline rather than against anybody else's.
Reported, not interpretedWe tell you what changed. We do not tell you what it means. That is a conversation for you and her doctor, and we will give you something plain enough to bring to it.
The distinction that gets missed
Unsettled, or actually wrong.
At three in the morning, by people who love her and have not slept, these two look identical. They are not, and the response to each is opposite.
Unsettled wants company. Somebody staying, in a familiar voice, until it passes. Reaching for a person would make it worse, and most nights this is what it is.
Actually wrong wants a person, immediately, and every minute spent soothing it is a minute lost.
Telling them apart is most of what the Guardian is for. It is also why it is allowed to be slow: this is not a judgment worth making quickly.
Where the line is
The Guardian gets a person. It does not practise medicine.
It can notice that something reads as physically wrong rather than emotionally unsettled, and it can act on that by reaching a human being fast. That is the whole of its authority.
It does not diagnose. It does not advise. It does not decide whether to call an ambulance, and Proxi is not emergency support. What it does is make sure the right person knows, sooner than they would have.
Every escalation ends with a human deciding. That is deliberate, and not a limitation we intend to engineer away.
Open questions, not features
Some things we are studying, and do not claim.
A voice that speaks with her most days hears a great deal. Whether any of it is a reliable early signal is a research question, and we would rather say so than sell it.
These are explored with families who opt in, separately and explicitly. None is a capability of the product today, and none will be described as one until the evidence exists.
Whether a sudden change in confusion has an early signal.
Infections can show up as sudden confusion before anything else, and they are treatable when caught. Whether a voice service could one day notice it early is a question we are working on. Not a claim.
Whether a shift in her baseline is visible in conversation.
Sudden change has many causes, some treatable if caught fast. Whether it shows up in how she talks, reliably enough to act on, is unknown.
Whether voice and body tell the same story.
For families who choose biometric monitoring, whether what Proxi hears and what a device measures agree. Opt-in, separate consent, and a study rather than a feature.
Why a general model with a good prompt is not this.
The conversation techniques, and the things it never does.
Proxi is not emergency support and does not provide medical advice.