Join this household?
This links your sign-in to that household. Say yes only if it’s your home.
Almost in. Which house is yours?
We couldn’t match your sign-in to a home on North Park. (Apple hid your email, which is fine.)
Confirm it’s yours with the phone number on file, and you’re in.
No phone on file, or new to the block? Ask to join and a block admin will approve it.
Use Google or an email link insteadSign out
Prefer Apple to share your email?
On your iPhone, open Settings, tap your name, then Sign in with Apple, then Blockapalooza, and tap Stop Using. Sign in with Apple again and choose Share My Email.
North Park Avenue
Something broken or not working right? Describe what happened — the page you're on is captured automatically.
📡 Source coverage
Where the block’s news comes from, whether the pipeline is running, and which sources are telling the truth about themselves. A run that merely starts is not a success — every number here is a funnel count, not a heartbeat.
📡 Block Pulse
One useful question, asked at the right time. No Pulse is better than a dumb Pulse — an empty day is a legitimate outcome, and nothing here publishes without you.
Block announcement
Shown to approved residents in What’s new on Blockapalooza. Choose Important only for something every household must see: it pops up once for each person until they tap “Got it”.
Scrolling Ticker
The announcement scrolls below the navigation bar. Set start/end dates or make it indefinite.
Current Announcements
ROLL CALL
Every house on the block, and who has joined. Only admins see this list. Invite prepares the email so you can read it first; nothing is sent from here yet.
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Send soft-launch invites
The approved households already signed in, plus the Roethers. Only an approved household can be invited. Each gets a fresh personal link (14 days, single use); sending again cancels the old one. One email per adult on file. Nothing goes out until you press Send and confirm.
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Personal invite link
One link per household. When they open it and sign in — Apple, Google or an email link — they land on their home, no matching or approval. Valid 14 days, single use.
Invite a Neighbor
Sends a branded Blockapalooza email with a sign-in link. No expiry. Also adds them to the directory.
Invitation Status
Launch Communication
One canonical communication, two renders. Preview sends nothing. A test send goes only to addresses you type here (max 3) and never touches the block list. The broad send additionally needs the communication to be approved and the exact confirm phrase — deploying can never send.
Activation Funnel
Seeded households are not the conversion denominator — the block was never shown the year-round product. The rate that matters is exposed → meaningful action, and “exposed” only becomes real once a launch send stamps invitations.
Orphan Identities
Accounts with no Directory identity behind them — the failure class where someone signs in and lands nowhere. Nothing here is repaired automatically: a suggested match means one unclaimed row matches that email exactly, and the link is still yours to make from Users → Link to Me.
Add Trusted Contact
Manage Trusted Recommendations
Community Message Requests
When a neighbor requests a community message, it appears here. One admin approval sends it to all directory members.
Compose & Send (Admin Direct)
Send a message directly to all verified directory members.
Event Settings — Moved
The Block Party is now managed the same way as every other event — one system, not two.
Go to Events → pick the Block Party tradition (or select an existing Block Party event below to edit its timeline) → set the date, start/end time, and location right there. Checking “This is THE annual Block Party” is what used to be the RSVP-enabled toggle here.
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Neighbors nominating other neighbors. Approve to add to directory and send an invite email.
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Create a Poll
Only one poll can be active at a time. Creating a new one automatically ends whatever's currently running.
Current & Past Polls
Poll Console
Closing a vote and publishing its results are two separate decisions. Closing stops new ballots; residents still see nothing until you publish.
🤖 AI Suggestions
Claude looks at what's coming up on the block and proposes a few Daily Party Poll questions — nothing here ever goes live on its own. Approve one to schedule it for real, or dismiss it.
Schedule a Daily Poll
Write your own question directly — same options builder as the Block Poll above, plus a go-live date. Leave the date blank (or today) to go live immediately.
Timeline
Every scheduled, active, and recently-ended Daily Party Poll, in order.
🖼️ Home art
The picture in the Home greeting card (Browse shows the same one). Off by default: with it off, Home and Browse show no art. Only images with recorded provenance can be picked.
Off: Home and Browse show no art.
Add a Seasonal Banner
Upload a photo and give it a start date. The site automatically switches to whichever banner's start date has most recently passed — so for Fall, just set the start date to whatever day fall actually starts this year (Labor Day, first day of school, whatever you're using), and it'll take over on its own from then on.
All Banners
Pending Photos
AI review (task #111) now auto-approves and auto-rejects the confident cases - anything left here is one the AI was uncertain about, with its note shown under the photo. Admins can also approve straight from the email that gets sent for each one.
Moderation Log
Every auto-approve, auto-reject, and manual decision, with the reason - including photos that were rejected and are no longer in the gallery.
🎯 AI Photo Centering
New profile photos are auto-centered on upload from now on. Run this once to catch every photo already in the directory from before this existed — safe to re-run any time, it only ever touches photos that don't have a centering point yet.
Marketplace Listings
Listings go live immediately when posted. Remove anything that shouldn't be here — residents can also mark their own as claimed or removed.
Email on/off
Turn each kind of email on or off, right now, with no release. Email goes out only when the server is ready for it and its switch here is on. Every switch starts off.
The newsletter also needs its Newsletter section switched on. Turning Emergency alerts on brings back the Alert neighbors button for every resident.
Emergency Alert Log
Every emergency alert sent, by anyone. Alerts go out immediately with no approval step - this is the record after the fact.
Neighborhood Watch Roster
Residents who've volunteered to be alerted about suspicious activity, separate from the full emergency-alert list. People opt in themselves from Edit Entry - there's nothing to add here.
🧪 Push to Test
Force-triggers a popup for you right now, regardless of whether you've already confirmed/dismissed it. This uses your real account — confirming or dismissing here updates your own actual confirmed/dismissed state, same as it would for any resident. Close without confirming if you don't want that.
🧪 AI Service Health Check
Actually calls every AI-powered feature on the site with a harmless test payload and reports whether each one is really working right now — not just "configured." Uses a small amount of real API usage each time you run it. Anything that would leave a real draft/insight/pending item behind is generated for real, then cleaned up automatically so your admin queues stay untouched.
🔧 System & Function Health Check
Checks the database connection, your own admin session, and every non-AI backend function. Weather/lake (public) and Chicago crime (called with your own signed-in session, exactly as the Safety page does) are actually invoked live; anything that sends real email or deletes a real account gets a safe "are you deployed and responding" ping only. A 🛡️ PROTECTED result means the endpoint is deployed and correctly refused an unsafe direct call — that is a pass, not an outage. One row is not a ping: the manual newsletter-draft check proves an anonymous POST is refused and then has an admin generate one real draft, which it deletes again — so that row uses a small amount of real AI usage each run.
Events Admin
Create, manage and preserve the things our block does together. Every event lives here — block parties, holidays, cleanups, whatever the block invents next.
All Events
Grouped by what you would actually do next. Each event shows its publication, lifecycle and participation state separately, what residents can currently do, and what is connected to it.
Create an Event
Saves as a draft — invisible to residents everywhere on the site until you hit Publish in the Events list below. Closes signups on any other currently open event — only one runs at a time.
If set, this also adds the event to the Block Calendar — one place to check, not two.
Event Traditions
The recurring things this block does — Block Party, Halloween, whatever comes next. A tradition holds the content that does not change year to year; each year's actual event is created from it above. Holidays are one kind of tradition, not the category.
🧩 Site Sections
Turn a section off and it disappears from the site completely for residents — no placeholder, no trace. Flip it back on any time.
🧪 Test group
Preview accounts for people who don’t live on the block. They can look around, but cannot post, vote, share or sign up; they see no neighbor’s contact details, get no newsletters or alerts, and are left out of every count. A test-group member is never an admin.
📡 Live Sign-In Activity
Who authenticated, when, through which provider — and what Blockapalooza did next. Newest activity first; refreshes every 15s while this tab is open. Last sign-in is a real credential authentication; last active is the newest use of a live session. A returning resident renews a session without signing in again, so the two differ — and where no live session remains, last active shows — rather than a guess.
👤 Manage Users & Admins
Every account that has ever signed in. Grant or revoke admin, deactivate or reactivate access, or permanently delete an account. Deactivating is reversible and doesn't touch the underlying sign-in account — use it as the default "remove access" action. Deleting is permanent.
📊 Community taps · last 30 days
Which Community cards, Home “On the block” lines and + actions neighbors tap. Anonymous: each row is a card, a day and a count. No names, no households, nothing finer than a day.
🗑 Post Deletion Log
Every Block Board post that's been removed, by its own author or by an admin. Deletion itself has no approval step — this is the record after the fact.
🚚 Friends of the Block
The people who work this block regularly without living on it — the UPS driver, USPS carrier, sanitation crew, FedEx driver. Any resident can add someone from the resident-facing section now — use this tab to add one yourself, or to hide/remove an entry (spam, duplicate, wrong info).
📅 Key Dates
Civic and neighborhood dates worth knowing that don't fit "Block Calendar event" - CPS start/end of school, Old Town Art Fair, Christkindl Market, Lollapalooza, etc. No live feed exists for any of these; add them here a couple times a year as they're announced and they'll show up in What's Happening and the Block Calendar automatically.
🤖 Key Dates AI
Discover finds real upcoming civic/festival dates worth adding (with a source link to verify) and drops them in the queue below. Enrich drafts a short note for dates you've already added that don't have one yet. Neither publishes anything on its own.
🙋 Suggested Dates
Key dates suggested via the "Suggest a Key Date" form on the Coming Up tile, or found by Key Dates AI's Discover above. Approve to add it to the list above; reject to decline.
🤖 Block AI — Insights
Looks at the last 14 days of real activity on this block — reactions, welcome waves, poll participation, Community Board posts — and names a few genuine, specific things worth your attention: a connection to make, a pattern in the data, something that's working, or a concrete next step. Never invents facts, never shown to residents, never acts on its own.
📚 Cross-Block Learnings
The shared playbook: what worked, what didn't, what actually got people to engage. Visible to every block's admin, not just this one — log something here whenever a feature, event, or experiment teaches you something worth remembering (or passing on).
🏠 Neighbor of the Month
Runs automatically once a month — picks a random resident and asks the AI to write a short, factual blurb about them (only real directory facts, never invented; respects their photo privacy setting). This button is for testing, or to re-roll the current month's pick.
🧠 Block Intelligence
Watches configured neighborhood sources, and decides for itself what it can defend. Publishing and suppressing happen automatically — nothing here waits on you, and the block keeps working if nobody opens this tab for a month.
Your job here is to observe and overrule. Every decision below shows what was decided, why, and by whom — and you can reverse any of them. Publishing a candidate makes it eligible for residents; it does not add a Key Date or feature it on Home, which are still separate deliberate actions.
Bring in a story
Paste a link to ONE story. It is checked (one story, not a list; no date the page does not state), then goes live credited “Added by the block team”. Every action is recorded with your reason.
Recent stories
Fix the words, re-read the date from the story’s own page, or take a story down. A date is never typed.
Audit log
Calendar checks
Per source: last attempt, last success, last failure. Every refused date with its reason. Neighbors’ suggestions, which you can hide.
Manage Sources
RSS/Atom feed URLs the AI reads from — shared by BOTH Local News (Community) and Safety News (see that tab): the AI judges each individual story on its own and files it into whichever feed it actually belongs to, regardless of which pane you add the source from. Tag each by how block-relevant it generally runs — Old Town first, then Lincoln Park/Gold Coast, then broader Chicago.
Learned from neighbors
When a neighbor shares a story that goes live, its publisher is combed too. On probation, a learned source's stories also need a local place to be kept; three kept with no 👎 or report and it graduates; two reports or mostly 👎 and it switches itself off. At most five a day; never social networks, search engines or link shorteners.
👋 Suggested by Residents
Sources residents have proposed. Approve to add it to Manage Sources above (active immediately); reject to dismiss.
🧺 PRE-PROD Refresh (staging only)
Reads significance for local-news items that are still current and have none yet, so fresh stories can reach WORTH KNOWING. Preflight shows which project and which secrets this deploy has, values redacted. Dry run shows what would be read without calling the model. Source Scout is the source round — which feeds are healthy, which have gone quiet, and which duplicates have appeared; it registers and approves nothing. To pull new articles from the feeds first, use “Check Sources” below — this does not duplicate that.
🤖 AI Auto-Publish (Community)
Reads every active source above and picks the genuinely block-relevant COMMUNITY stories only — crime/safety content is filtered out here and handled by the Safety News tab instead. Depending on the veto-window setting below, results either publish straight to What's Happening or wait in the list below for you to dismiss anything wrong. Either way you'll get a daily recap email of what went out, and anything already live can still be pulled down from Published below.
Controls whether "Check Sources" happens unattended every hour — the veto-window setting below decides what happens to what it finds. Uses a real AI call each run; turn this off anytime to pause the ongoing cost without losing the manual button above.
Reads up to 25 new approved stories per run so Home can rank them by significance. Uses a real AI call, counted against the shared $3.00/day AI limit; turn this off anytime to stop it.
When on, new items land in the list above instead of going live immediately, and you get an email the moment they're queued. Anything you don't dismiss auto-publishes once the window below passes — checked hourly, so windows under ~60 minutes won't be exact.
Published
Live right now in What's Happening's Local News tile and/or Neighborhood Safety's Safety News tile — the badge on each row shows which. Classification is a per-article AI judgment call, not always perfect (Block Club Chicago in particular publishes a genuine mix); use "Move to Safety" / "Move to Community" to fix a miscategorized item on the spot rather than waiting on a prompt tweak.
🚨 AI Auto-Publish (Safety)
Reads every active source in Local News > Manage Sources and picks ONLY genuine crime and public-safety incidents — general community/civic/human-interest stories are filtered out here and handled by Local News (Community) instead. Depending on the veto-window setting below, results either publish straight to Neighborhood Safety or wait in the list below for you to dismiss anything wrong. Either way you'll get a daily recap email (shared with Local News's own recap) of what went out.
Controls whether "Check Sources" happens unattended every hour — the veto-window setting below decides what happens to what it finds. Uses a real AI call each run; turn this off anytime to pause the ongoing cost without losing the manual button above.
When on, new items land in the list above instead of going live immediately, and you get an email the moment they're queued. Anything you don't dismiss auto-publishes once the window below passes — checked hourly, so windows under ~60 minutes won't be exact. Independent from Local News's own veto-window setting — the two can be configured differently.
Published
Live right now in Neighborhood Safety's Safety News tile. Same list as Local News > Published, filtered to Safety — manage either from whichever tab is more convenient.
🤖 AI Suggestions
Reads every Quick Ask / PSA / Lost & Found post a resident flagged for What's Happening, drafts a short blurb for each, and proposes them here — nothing here has ever gone live. Approve to publish to What's Happening, or dismiss.
Published
Live right now in What's Happening's "From the Board" tile.
📋 Feedback
Who has answered, and what. Neighbors and testers are told “Only the site admins see who answered what.” Only admins see this page. It reads when you open it; press Refresh for the latest.
Who has given feedback
Results
Round & questions
🚀 Launch page
Preview
🐛 Bug Reports 0 open
Submitted by residents (or signed-out visitors) via the floating bug button. Each one captures the page URL and browser automatically — nothing to reproduce from a vague description alone.
🤖 AI Draft
Pulls this week's activity (posts, Marketplace, new photos, upcoming events, Neighborhood Watch volunteers, new site features) and drafts a full issue. Always saved as a draft below — nothing sends until you review and publish it.
Still just a draft either way — this only controls whether it happens unattended. Turning it off doesn't affect the "Generate AI Draft" button above.
📰 Write an Issue
Save as a draft to keep working on it, or publish directly if it's ready to go out on residents' next weekly/monthly/annual send.