Your Block, All
Year Long

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.

Create a Poll

Only one poll can be active at a time. Creating a new one automatically ends whatever's currently running.

Closing a vote and publishing its results are two separate decisions. Closing stops new ballots; residents still see nothing until you publish.

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.

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.

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.

📅 Timeline —

Shown on the dedicated events page as the day's program. Order controlled by the arrows.

📝 Page Content —

Everything shown on the dedicated event page beyond the basics — story, sign-up categories, and how neighbors can chip in.

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.

📡 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.

🗑 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 Party 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.

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.

👋 Suggested by Residents

Sources residents have proposed. Approve to add it to Manage Sources above (active immediately); reject to dismiss.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Community" tile.

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.

📰 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.

Newsletter Delivery

Drafts

Published Issues