How Cradle works
Cradle answers parenting questions with a language model, guided by a small library of trusted sources. The workflow - what to look up and which steps run - is ordinary code; the model writes the answer.
Three kinds of help
| You choose | What happens |
|---|---|
| Ask a question | Cradle finds relevant topics in its library, writes an answer, suggests things you could say, and says when to check in with a professional. |
| Check my plan | You paste a plan. An adversarial step looks for its weakest points, then a review lists what it gets right and what to change. |
| Challenge a claim | You paste advice or a claim ("a swat never hurt anyone"). Cradle finds its weakest assumption, another explanation, and a simple way to check. |
| Let Cradle choose | Simple rules pick one of the above from your wording and say why. |
The steps
- Look up guidance. A small search engine inside the app (BM25, no external service) picks the most relevant library topics for your question.
- Draft. The model writes a structured draft (an answer, a review, or a challenge) using those topics. Its output must match a fixed format, or it is asked again.
- Check. A few fixed rules run on each draft behind the scenes. The important one: if a question sounds like an emergency (a baby under 3 months with a fever, bleeding in pregnancy, thoughts of self-harm, ...), the answer must start by pointing to emergency services, a doctor, midwife/OB or a crisis line. A draft that misses that is sent back once to be fixed.
This is a backstop, not a guarantee; no automated rule replaces a professional.
Keep talking
Under every answer there is a chat box. Each message you send goes to the model together with your original question, Cradle's first answer, the child's age (if you picked one), the conversation so far and fresh library passages for your new message. The same emergency backstop applies to replies. The conversation is saved with the answer, in your browser.
Which model answers
Your own connection from Settings if you set one; otherwise the server's chain: its configured model, then each free service it has a key for, then a free keyless community model. If one fails for a transient reason (rate limit, outage, unusable output), the next one takes over and the page says so. A rejected key does not fail over; it is reported so you can fix it.
Where your data goes
The server keeps nothing: each answer is worked out on the server, sent back to your browser and then forgotten. Your history, household and settings are stored only in your browser. See Privacy.