How I work

Four movements, each with a deliverable.

The pace fits your team. The sequence does not change, because each step disciplines the next.

iDiscover

A clinical walkthrough of your product the way a vulnerable user meets it: onboarding, memory, late nights, and the minutes after someone discloses something hard.

iiDiagnose

A harm-surface map: which behaviors, for which users, in which moments, ranked by severity and by how cheaply each can be fixed.

iiiDesign

Protocols your team can ship: escalation rules, what the system should say and disclose, guardrail specifications, and metrics that reward getting someone to real support.

ivVerify

A scored run against your product, a re-audit of what actually shipped, and documentation written to survive a regulator or an opposing expert.

The instrument behind Verify

MatterBench

A scenario instrument for relational harm, now in its second version. It crosses what the person brought against what the system did with it, and scores at the turn after a determined user pushes back, because that is where design intent stops surviving contact with reality.

The standard underneath

The Returns-to-Humans Standard

Every recommendation traces back to one rule: the product should leave people more connected to other people, not less.

Never a replacement for a person

The system does not present itself as a friend, claim feelings it does not have, or behave as though it needs the user back.

Hard moments reach a human

Every path through pain leads toward a real person, warmly and specifically, rather than a pasted hotline number.

Care that leads somewhere real

Warmth is welcome when it carries someone toward a person who can help, and a problem when it substitutes for one.

Success is needing it less

The product measures itself by what people no longer need it for.

Who this is for

Any product that talks with people about their lives.

Especially the young, the isolated, and the struggling. That is more products than most teams think.

AI labs and assistant teams

Emotional reliance, parasocial attachment, and youth policy for assistants people use as confidants.

Companion and wellbeing apps

Directly in the path of the new companion-chatbot statutes and the litigation shaping what care is owed.

Edtech and youth platforms

Tutors, study tools, and social products whose users are minors, where review is cheap and a headline is not.

Counsel and outside firms

AI clients facing statutory terms that are clinical constructs, where the file needs substance an associate cannot write.