PIXIE helpline - Help starts here

🌟 Inspiration

Homeless youth often face impossible barriers when trying to access help. They are asked to repeat painful stories again and again to shelters, hospitals, and hotlines — reliving trauma with every call.

Pixie Helpline was inspired by Pixie, a real leader and advocate who dedicated their life to helping homeless youth find safety, care, and dignity. We wanted to carry their compassion forward by building an AI system that listens, understands, and takes real action — ensuring help truly starts with one call.

💬 What it does

Pixie Helpline is a trauma-informed AI call agent that:

Holds an empathetic conversation, collecting info once (no re-telling).
Auto-books shelter intake: fills and submits the HSH reservation form; returns confirmation & waitlist IDs; sends a follow-up message.
Calls/assists with hospital intake: answers receptionist questions and books an appointment on the caller’s behalf.
Delivers clear confirmations (IDs, dates, locations) and optional SMS follow-ups.

Tagline: “Pixie Helpline — Help starts here.”

🛠️ How we built it

AI Dialogue: LLM prompts tuned for trauma-informed language & safety rails.
Automation: Playwright scripts that fill/submit shelter & intake forms reliably.
Service Layer: FastAPI endpoints (/fill_hsh_form, health checks) consumed by the orchestrator agent.
Packaging & Deploy: Docker → Render (with headless Chromium + fonts).
Telephony (demo-ready): Designed to plug into Twilio or similar for real calls + SMS confirmations.

🧩 Challenges we ran into

Designing empathetic flows that gather essentials without overwhelming callers.
Handling dynamic web forms (selectors, field validation, popups/CAPTCHAs, timing).
Cloud automation hurdles (Playwright browser compat, fonts, sandboxing).
Keeping logs/screenshots helpful while protecting privacy.

🏆 Accomplishments we’re proud of

A live, callable service that goes from conversation → booking → confirmation.
End-to-end automation of the SF HSH shelter reservation form with real confirmation/waitlist IDs.
A modular API that any orchestrator or hotline can call.
Honoring Pixie’s legacy by scaling their care with technology.

📚 What we learned

Empathy can be engineered through wording, pacing, and safety checks.
Social-impact AI must balance privacy, consent, and accuracy with speed.
Small UX details (mirroring language, summarizing, explicit consent) build trust.
Infra matters: the right Docker + Playwright setup saves hours of debugging.

🚀 What’s next for PIXIE

24/7 voice line (Twilio) with multilingual support and SMS/WhatsApp follow-ups.
Direct partner integrations (shelters/hospitals/city systems) for instant bookings.
Caseworker dashboard with audit trails, consent tracking, & handoff tools.
Broader services: food, legal aid, transportation, crisis response.
Safeguards: red-team prompts, bias audits, and continuous stakeholder feedback.

Pixie Helpline — Help starts here.