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TinySlot: Verified Childcare Openings, by Phone

Inspiration

Finding childcare looks like a search problem, but it usually ends as hours of phone work.

Directories can show which childcare centers exist, but they rarely contain the information a parent actually needs: Is there a current opening for the right age group? Does it cover the required weekdays and working hours? What is the current tuition? Is a tour available?

Parents repeatedly call centers, explain the same constraints, wait on hold, and manually compare incomplete answers. TinySlot turns that fragmented process into a bounded, evidence-backed phone workflow powered by CALL-E.

What TinySlot Does

TinySlot starts with a privacy-minimized childcare brief:

Age band
Desired start date
Required weekdays
Drop-off and pickup times
Monthly budget
Optional subsidy requirement
Number of matches needed

The parent reviews the candidate centers before any call begins.

TinySlot then calls a maximum of three approved centers in one wave. CALL-E conducts the natural conversations and returns a strict structured result for every recipient, including:

Business identity
Age-band acceptance
Current vacancy status
Earliest start date
Available weekdays
Operating hours
Monthly tuition
Registration fee
Subsidy acceptance
Tour availability
Evidence quotations

TinySlot does not blindly call the entire list. It evaluates each result and stops when the requested number of qualified matches has been found.

In the demonstration, two centers match the parent's requirements, one center has only a waitlist, and three unnecessary calls are avoided.

Evidence-Backed Matching

CALL-E handles the conversation, but an AI summary does not decide whether a center qualifies.

TinySlot uses deterministic application code to check:

Whether the intended business answered
Whether it serves the required age band
Whether a real opening exists
Whether the opening is available by the requested date
Whether all required weekdays are available
Whether operating hours cover the care window
Whether the cost fits the stated budget
Whether required evidence is present

A waitlist is never classified as an opening. Voicemail, refusal, wrong entity, and unknown answers remain separate outcomes. Missing hard evidence routes the result to human review instead of becoming a convenient guess.

Call Summaries and Conversation Reports

Each completed center result includes CALL-E's post-call summary, structured outcome, deterministic checks, transcript-turn count, and evidence.

The operator can export:

Machine-readable JSON
A privacy-masked conversation PDF

The PDF includes the care brief, call summaries, structured results, deterministic checks, available transcript turns, and evidence quotations. Phone-like values are masked before the document is rendered.

Human-Approved Tour Requests

Finding an opening does not automatically authorize another call.

The parent must select a qualified center, review a separate disclosure envelope, and type REQUEST TOUR before TinySlot can place a follow-up call.

The tour call may use only:

Parent's first name
Callback number
Care age band
Requested start date
Parent-approved tour windows

TinySlot cannot enroll a child, accept policies, make payments, agree to charges, or disclose the child's identity or medical information.

How We Built It

TinySlot is built with Next.js, React, TypeScript, and the CALL-E TypeScript SDK.

The server imports @call-e/calle and uses client.calls.create() and client.calls.get() at runtime.

The implementation includes:

CALL-E batch recipients
Strict per-recipient JSON Schema
Separate tour-result schema
Zod result validation
Deterministic matching
Adaptive wave stopping
Stable idempotency keys
HMAC recipient bindings
E.164 phone validation
Server-side destination allowlists
Operator authentication
Rate limiting
Transcript and summary reconciliation
Privacy-masked PDF generation
Synthetic no-call mode by default

The public demo is a static, synthetic build that cannot place calls or expose credentials. Live calls run only through the protected Next.js server routes.

Real CALL-E Validation

TinySlot completed an authorized live CALL-E call.

The read-only validation returned:

Status: completed
Task completed: true
Confidence: high (0.86)
Structured result: schema-valid
TinySlot checks: 8 passed, 0 failed, 0 unknown
Transcript turns: 58
Proof result: PASS

The proof command retrieves the existing call through the CALL-E SDK without creating another call or printing the phone number or transcript.

Challenges

The hardest challenge was treating a phone call as a real-world side effect rather than a normal API request.

A client can lose connectivity after CALL-E has accepted a call. TinySlot therefore keeps stable operation identifiers, uses idempotency keys, preserves accepted call IDs, and never interprets a polling failure as proof that no call occurred.

Another challenge was preventing plausible AI output from becoming a false match. We separated CALL-E's conversational role from deterministic eligibility checks and made unknown a valid, visible outcome.

We also designed the public demonstration so judges can explore the complete experience without credentials, credits, or the ability to call real people.

Accomplishments

Completed an authorized real CALL-E call
Built a complete no-call public demonstration
Added adaptive call waves that stop after enough matches
Preserved voicemail, waitlist, refusal, wrong entity, and unknown outcomes
Added deterministic constraint evaluation
Added post-call summaries and transcript handling
Added privacy-masked conversation PDF export
Added a separate approval boundary for tour requests
Added 18 focused tests
Passed lint, TypeScript, production build, dependency audit, and repository validation

What We Learned

The most important voice-agent capability is not dialing. It is safely connecting a natural conversation to a controlled workflow.

Structured results, evidence, idempotency, durable call IDs, explicit uncertainty, and human approval make phone automation trustworthy and reusable.

We also learned that public demos should not expose live-call credentials. TinySlot separates the safe public experience from the protected live execution path.