Ancrafe — Project Story

About the project

Ancrage is a voice-first companion for seniors living at home, paired with a caregiver dashboard. It reduces caregiver mental load by automating the daily loop: reminders → confirmation → retries → escalation when attention is needed.

What inspired us

A teammate interviewed his mother, who cares for her own parents. The key insight: the hardest part isn’t only doing tasks—it’s the constant mental load of remembering, checking, repeating, and worrying.

What we built (MVP)

Caregiver Web App (Desktop): schedule reminders (meds, appointments), send/schedule audio messages, and view a full timeline of events.
Voice “Device” (Web App): speaks reminders, listens for Yes/No/Later, runs a simple cognitive micro-exercise, and supports “I need help”.
Whattsap alerts: notifies the caregiver if reminders aren’t confirmed or if help is requested.

How we built it

Frontend: Next.js (dashboard + phone device UI)
Backend: FastAPI + database + scheduler
Voice: Whisper API (STT) + ElevenLabs (TTS)
Messaging: Whattsap API for escalation
Retry logic: reminder at (T_0), retries at (T_0+2) and (T_0+7), escalation at (T_0+8) minutes.

Challenges & learnings

We kept scope realistic by focusing on the caregiving workflow, not a full chatbot.
Voice demos can be fragile (permissions/noise/latency), so we built clear UI states and demo triggers.
In caregiving, trust + simplicity beat flashy features.