Headcount & Vouch

Inspiration

After a disaster, a duty officer does not need another completed-call count. They need to know who was not reached. CDC CASPER still does that with clipboards over three days. Headcount is that assessment on the phone, in an hour — and voicemail is not a reach.

Employment verification has the opposite failure: tools that dial first and invent authorization later. Vouch will not place a CALL-E call without a consent artifact. In California, SB 1162 strips salary history even when the requester asked for it.

What it does

Headcount is an EOC console for a one-shot household needs wave. Coverage is dialed / reached / unaccounted. Unsupported model claims strike through. Medical emergency, trapped, or a bad critical field fail closed to a human — never auto-resolved.

Vouch is a verification console. Confirm stays off if consent is missing, revoked, or expired. The scope compiler keeps only requested ∩ consent, minus jurisdiction blocks. The agent may ask only the permitted set. Third-party-only is a first-class disposition, not a collapsed fail.

Both default to fixture replay (no API key). Live CALL-E is opt-in. The video shows two real calls: a 62s CASPER drill, then a 66s employment verify that recorded title and dates, took a policy no-comment on rehire, and never asked compensation.

How we built it

TypeScript monorepo: Next.js consoles, SQLite, a shared CALL-E client (@call-e/calle 0.7), a local simulator, and Remotion reels that play the same JSON the board used.

Each app was vendored into a standalone folder for awesome-phone-call-agents so judges do not need this workspace.

Headcount PR: https://github.com/CALLE-AI/awesome-phone-call-agents/pull/601 Vouch PR: https://github.com/CALLE-AI/awesome-phone-call-agents/pull/605

Challenges we ran into

Cursor's sandbox 403s CALL-E. A live create can return status: completed before the structured result exists. Webhooks are unsigned; the old verify/unwrap helpers implement a contract CALL-E no longer sends. Never re-issue run_call after a timeout — that dials the person again.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Two real outbound calls on video, not a mock. A kill switch on every screen. A consent gate with no UI override. Salary never reaching the Vouch task string in California.

What we learned

Idempotency keys should come from the authorization, not the attempt. unknown is a first-class answer. region and locale must be passed explicitly — never inferred from the number.

What's next for Headcount & Vouch

Keep fixture as the default. If this goes further: more CASPER instruments for Headcount, and a real consent-artifact store for Vouch so the gate is not seed-only.

Built With

• call-e
• next.js
• node.js
• remotion
• sqlite
• typescript