Working prototype · open source

Legal aid usually meets a tenant after the deadline was already missed.

Most people who call legal aid about a repair don't need an intake interview. They need one correctly drafted letter, sent the right way, on a date that can be proved — and that letter is the legal prerequisite that decides the case a year later. By the time a tenant reaches a person, that step is usually behind her.

Threshold is an attempt at the step before that: a tenant fills it in alone, in her own words, and it produces three things — a letter she can send, a list of things to raise when she does reach a person, and a structured memo for whoever picks up her file.

Read the specifications

Built by Amanda L. Czocher, a Texas appellate lawyer, with Claude. Published under CC BY-NC 4.0 — free to use and adapt, not to sell. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or speaking for any legal aid organisation. Nothing you type here is stored or sent anywhere.

Threshold — concept demonstration

Tenant legal aid intake · Texas · 9 August 2026 · working prototype — all paths run
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What you're looking at

Threshold is an intake tool for legal aid tenants. A tenant fills it in alone — no volunteer on the phone — and it produces three things: a letter she can send, a list of things to raise when she talks to a person, and a structured case memo for the lawyer or advocate who picks up her file.

The premise is that most people who call legal aid about a repair don't need an intake interview. They need one correctly drafted letter, sent the right way, on a date that can be proved — and that letter is the legal prerequisite that decides the case a year later. Legal aid currently meets these tenants after that step was missed.

This is a prototype, not a product. All nine doors now run from the first question to the three outputs — nothing dead-ends. It saves nothing and connects to nothing, and every answer in it is made up. What it is meant to show is the shape — the order of the questions, what the tool refuses to do, and what comes out the other end.

Two doors are built in full: something broken in my unit and a notice of eviction. The eviction door has the gate in it — if a hearing has already happened, it stops and sends you to a person instead of finishing the form.

Three things to notice

  1. Type a vague date — "a while back, right after Memorial Day" — then look at the memo. Your words sit in one column and not converted in the other. The tool will not invent a date, and it turns the gap into a task on the tenant's list instead.
  2. Nothing is ever an assessment. The tenant's list says ask them about this. It never says you may have a problem. That line is the difference between an agenda and practising law without a licence.
  3. Use "see how the record is built" at the bottom of the page. Every value carries where it came from and whether anyone confirmed it.
Concept demonstration — nothing is stored or sent see how the record is built skip to what comes out start over