Crisis Referral Protocol

Meet Buddie applies the same automated crisis protocol to normal inbound group messages from every confirmed member, regardless of group personality, subscription tier or phone number. Two exceptions are described under age review: a member whose age is under review has all other processing stopped while this check continues, and a member we have clear reason to believe is under 13 is excluded from this check entirely and is given crisis resources directly instead.

How detection works

Before an inbound message is saved or used to generate a group reply, its text is sent to an AI model for a binary safety classification. The classifier is instructed to detect possible suicidal ideation, a wish to die, suicide intent or planning, and self-harm. It is also instructed to distinguish ordinary figurative language, obvious hyperbole, fictional discussion, and discussion about someone else.

Where the message goes

The crisis-classification request contains the text of the individual message and classification instructions, without a phone number, member or group identifier, name, pseudonymous identifier, or conversation history. It is transmitted to Anthropic for classification. Although Meet Buddie does not retain a flagged message, Anthropic may retain API content under its own commercial retention and trust-and-safety rules, as described in our Privacy Policy.

What happens when a message is flagged

When the classifier returns a crisis result, Meet Buddie does not save that message and does not reply to it in the group. Group settings, personality and activation state are not changed. The next message is processed normally and receives no special tone or treatment because of the earlier result.

Meet Buddie attempts to send the author the approved private crisis-service referral, on the same messaging channel the group uses. The referral is not sent to the group and is not disclosed to an administrator. Quiet hours do not apply to it.

Referral messages are normally limited to one per person in a rolling 60-minute period. A duplicate may be sent if we cannot confirm whether an earlier referral was accepted by the messaging provider, or if the temporary record used to suppress a repeat could not be written.

When the check cannot run

If the classifier returns an unusable result or fails, Meet Buddie tries once more. If it still cannot produce a classification, the service fails closed: the message is not saved and no group reply is generated. No referral is sent in that case, because no crisis determination was completed. The classification request has a fixed time limit, so a slow or unresponsive check is handled deliberately rather than left hanging.

What we record

For aggregate reporting, Meet Buddie records only the event timestamp, whether a referral was sent, the dispatch outcome, and the messaging provider’s acknowledgement. This record contains no message content, phone number, member identifier, group identifier or other user identifier. It is available only to the backend service and has no administrator-facing interface.

Retention

Referral messages are normally limited to one per person in a rolling 60-minute period. A duplicate may be sent if we cannot confirm whether an earlier referral was accepted by the messaging provider, or if the temporary record used to suppress a repeat could not be written. Retention of the de-identified reporting record, related delivery records and any content retained by Anthropic is described in the Privacy Policy’s retention sections.

Known limits

Automated detection of suicidal ideation in short, fragmented group messages is unreliable. The classifier can miss genuine risk and can misinterpret figurative or joking language. It sees only the text of the individual inbound message, not a clinical history, tone of voice, location or offline circumstances.

The protocol can evaluate only people who send a message. It cannot detect a person who reads the group but does not write. A private referral can also fail because of provider outages, invalid routing, or other delivery problems.

Crisis screening does not stop when a group is paused or deactivated, or when the group administrator’s account exhausts its message allowance. In each of those states Buddie stops generating replies, storing messages, building memory and running analytics, but the safety check on an inbound message from a joined member continues and a private referral can still be sent. Screening a message for risk of harm is not contingent on a billing state.

Meet Buddie does not diagnose, counsel, monitor what happens after a referral, contact administrators, or contact emergency services.

If you need help now

Meet Buddie is not an emergency service. In the United States you can call or text 988 at any time, or text HOME to 741741. If someone is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency number.

Contact

Meet Buddie L.L.C.
Questions about this protocol may be sent to support@meetbuddie.com.