Document 1 of 3 · Product
What Zarela is, who it is for, the problem it solves, its pillars, its surfaces, and what is deliberately in and out of scope. The shared reference for product, design, business, and leadership.
Zarela is a chat-first and voice-first AI companion for autistic adults (18+) with borderline intellectual functioning. Rather than being another app to learn, Zarela joins the family's shared chat like a new, trusted member — a calm, patient presence beside the people the person already knows. The person can type or speak in their own language from day one.
The product rests on three pillars: companionship (a companion that never tires and gently reduces isolation), care (consent-first features that look out for the person through the day), and learning (everyday tasks turned into calm, guided steps that build lasting skills). A defining idea is fading prompts: once a skill is learned, the reminders quietly recede while watchful care continues. The watchful care never switches off; only unnecessary prompting fades.
The emotional core is the future-care anxiety of aging parents and caregivers — “what happens to my child when I'm gone?” Zarela is positioned as part of the answer: building independence and continuing to support the person. It is always a complement to human caregivers and therapy, never a replacement. Because the people it serves are vulnerable, Zarela is a YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) product where safety, consent, privacy (GDPR), and trust are first-class concerns.
Zarela is a calm, adult, multilingual AI companion that lives inside a familiar chat, supports an autistic adult's companionship, daily care, and learning, keeps a trusted family circle gently in the loop with consent, and grows the person's independence over time. It works fully on its own; a rehabilitation center can optionally be connected on top.
Zarela is a chat-first and voice-first AI companion for autistic adults (18+) with borderline intellectual functioning. Instead of a separate app the person must learn, Zarela appears as a new member in the family's shared chat — a calm presence in the chat list alongside trusted people. The person can type or speak in their own language, and a system-wide communication layer lets every participant use their own language (family, caregivers, and optionally a center's staff); the language complexity is handled behind the scenes.
A patient, always-available companion that never tires and gently reduces isolation.
Consent-first features that look out for the person through the day — distress, scams, location risk, missed routines, escalation.
Everyday tasks turned into calm, guided steps that build real, lasting skills at the person's own pace, with fading prompts.
| Stakeholder | Who they are | What they need from Zarela |
|---|---|---|
| The person (“loved one”) | An autistic adult (18+) with borderline intellectual functioning. Uses a managed account. | A simple, familiar, calm companion; help understanding the world; safety without feeling watched; growing independence. |
| Responsible Support Person | A parent, primary family supporter, or legal/responsible support figure who creates the initial support environment. | Confidence the person is supported and safe; a way to set up and gently oversee without controlling forever. |
| Family members | Relatives in the trusted circle. | To stay connected and in the loop, with consent. |
| Caregivers | Added for ongoing support, routines, companionship, or escalation. A role, not a default separate app. | Permission-scoped access to help with daily support and escalation. |
| Emergency contacts | People surfaced in limited, time-critical flows. | To be reachable when escalation requires it. |
| Rehabilitation center staff (optional) | A professional caregiver on a center-owned account, connected only by family consent. | To observe, teach, and guide the AI for a case, with continuity across staff changes. |
| Zarela company / Admin | Internal operators, content, support, and moderation roles. | To run, moderate, and support the platform safely — an internal surface, not a normal user app. |
The person never self-registers. A Responsible Support Person creates the initial support environment so every person has a responsible adult and a trusted circle around them. This is an early-stage setup model, not permanent control — and it sharply lowers the risk of impostors entering the user pool, which matters greatly for the future Match-maker feature.
These principles are binding. Every surface and feature decision should be checkable against them.
The experience lives inside a familiar chat. Zarela is a contact, not a dashboard. Intelligence stays behind the scenes; the surface stays calm and predictable.
Voice is a core accessibility feature, not a later enhancement. Many autistic adults find typing slow, tiring, or impossible, so the person can speak naturally and hear a reply.
The voice is calm, warm, respectful, and adult. Normal adult curiosity — relationships, attraction, sexuality, emotions — is handled safely and without shame, never infantilized.
No monitored capability or peer connection runs without a confirmed, current consent record. Consent is versioned and revocable.
The person should feel supported, not watched or controlled. Family answers come from consent-bound summaries, never unrestricted access to private chats.
Progressive Autonomy means building independence over time. Reminders and restrictions fade as readiness grows; only watchful safety support remains.
Zarela is delivered as separate apps/surfaces over one shared identity. Caregiver is a role inside the Family & Support App, not a separate default app. The center surface is optional.
| Surface | Who uses it | Role in the product |
|---|---|---|
| Person App | The autistic adult (managed account) | The companion side. Extremely simple and familiar; chat-first and voice-first. |
| Family & Support App | Responsible Support Person, family, caregivers (per permission), emergency contacts, optional center staff (by consent) | The support side. Chat-first; heavy controls live inside categorized Settings. |
| Specialist / Center App OPTIONAL | A center's professional caregiver, on a center-owned account | Optional professional-support layer, active only when a family connects a center by consent. |
| Admin Panel | Internal company roles (Super Admin, Operator, Content, Marketing, Support, custom) | Internal company surface for operations, content, support, and Room/moderation management. Not a normal user app. |
| Website / Marketing Surface | Public visitors, prospective families, rehabilitation centers | Discovery, SEO/AEO content, and waitlist capture. Separate from the core app experience. |
The companion side of Zarela. Its guiding design principle is extremely simple and familiar — it should feel like a chat app and a feed the person already knows, so the training cost is near zero. It must not feel like a care dashboard, clinical tool, learning platform, or admin surface.
The Person App has exactly four simple areas: Chat, Today, Timeline, and Help. There is deliberately no separate “Dictionary” tab — explanation is part of Zarela's character, not a tool.
A simple “what matters today” area — not a complex calendar. Contains medication reminders, appointments, center visits, daily routines, simple step-by-step tasks, and gentle wellbeing check-ins, with simple actions like Done, Remind me later, Help me do this, Ask my caregiver. Zarela can guide a task step by step at first; as the person becomes more independent, reminders become quieter and less frequent while safety checking continues in the background (fading prompts).
A safer, family-trusted alternative to open algorithmic feeds: a curated, interest-based feed, not an open social network. Content is based on the person's interests with Responsible Support Person / permitted caregiver safety settings and safety filtering, in age-appropriate adult framing. If a piece of content raises a question or strong emotion, the person can ask Zarela to explain it calmly. It deliberately has no open DMs with strangers, public comments, uncontrolled user search, addictive explore engine, uncontrolled external links, ads, or any direct path for strangers to reach the person.
A very simple Help area, always one tap away (“I need help”, “I feel unsafe”, “I am lost”, “Call/message my caregiver”, “Ask Zarela what to do”). Depending on consent and settings, Zarela can guide the person calmly, suggest contacting a caregiver, notify the trusted circle, share location, and escalate distress or safety alerts. Critical feel: this must not feel like surveillance — the person should feel supported, not watched.
This replaces any separate dictionary feature. If the person doesn't understand a word, a message, a joke, a video, a feeling, or a confusing situation, they simply ask their friend Zarela. It feels conversational, never like using a tool. Zarela can explain difficult words, messages from others, jokes and social cues, online safety risks (OTP codes, gift cards, suspicious links, money requests, scams), emotions, and topics like boundaries, privacy, consent, friendship, relationships, and personal safety. Because the person is an adult, Zarela does not infantilize normal adult curiosity, and handles sensitive topics safely, respectfully, and without shame — gently encouraging involvement of the trusted circle when a situation suggests risk.
An extension of fading prompts: Zarela can gradually reduce communication restrictions as the person gains readiness. The goal is independence, not permanent control; safety support stays active while only unnecessary control fades. Indicative levels:
| Level | Meaning |
|---|---|
| L0 | Zarela + Responsible Support Person only. |
| L1 | Initial contact list created by the Responsible Support Person. |
| L2 | Suggested contacts/friends, with support-person approval. |
| L3 | Limited friend requests by the person. |
| L4 | Freer social use with safety support. |
| L5 | More independent use with quiet background support. |
Levels are indicative and subject to safety review; the exact unlock criteria are an open decision.
Early-stage, open user search and open social discovery are off — but can unlock gradually via Progressive Autonomy. The person should never have to manage the safety system.
Chat-first and simple. Its visible surfaces are Chat, Rooms, Match-maker, Overview/Today, and Settings — five surfaces only. Most care, permission, consent, autonomy, routine, caregiver, and center controls live inside categorized Settings so the app never feels like an admin dashboard.
Its own familiar Chat area, as simple as the Person App's. Zarela is always pinned as a family assistant. The family can chat with Zarela directly, with the loved one and trusted circle according to permissions, and with caregivers and permitted contacts. Family-to-family chat from the Match-maker opens inside this Chat surface; important alerts can appear as cards inside Chat. Zarela answers family questions only within consent and permitted summaries (e.g. “How was he today?”, “Why was the food reminder missed?”, “How should I message him?”).
Zarela answers from consent-bound summaries, never unrestricted private chat access. The app must not become a way to watch the loved one.
Official Zarela-managed community spaces for families and support people — community-building, discussion, online events, education, and location/language/topic-based support (by country, city, language, topic, or event type).
Families can join or leave official Rooms, but they cannot create Rooms or define Room policies.
| Families can | Families cannot |
|---|---|
| Browse official Rooms; join (if policy allows); leave; participate per policy; attend official events; receive announcements; report messages or members. | Create/edit Rooms; define Room policies; assign moderators; create official events; turn private groups into Rooms; use Rooms to bypass Match-maker; directly access vulnerable adults through Rooms. |
Only Zarela Company / Admin can create, edit, archive, pause, or close Rooms, define policies, assign moderators, schedule official events, control visibility, classify by country/city/language/topic, and enforce moderation.
Safe, family-mediated discovery of compatible peers (layered bios, city-level location, both families accept, support-person approval). It is intentionally top-level because it is high-value for families. It must not be available directly to the person in early stages; the person does not browse, search, or initiate. (Full flow appears under Conversation Types.)
A family-facing summary surface: how the loved one is doing within consent-bound summaries, upcoming routines and reminders, and important alerts surfaced as cards. It reflects, it does not expose raw private chat.
The heavy operational and configuration concepts live here, organized into categories so the app stays chat-first:
| Category | Contains |
|---|---|
| A · Loved One Profile | Language, communication level, interests, sensitivities, calming strategies, overwhelm triggers, preferred output mode, independence level. |
| B · Trusted Circle & Contacts | Trusted circle, family members, who can chat with the loved one, who receives updates, emergency contacts, add/remove contact permissions. |
| C · Caregivers | Add/remove caregiver, caregiver permissions, temporary access, schedule, routine access, alert access. |
| D · Routines & Reminders | Medication, appointments, sleep, food/water, hygiene, therapy/learning tasks, reminder style, escalation if missed, fading prompts. |
| E · Safety & Alerts | Distress, scam/money, location risk, unsafe messages, missed critical routine, unusual silence, escalation chain, push/SMS/call settings. |
| F · Progressive Autonomy | Current level, unlocked/locked permissions, Zarela recommendations, approve/reject unlock, rollback if needed. |
| G · Consent & Privacy | What data is used, who sees what, voice/audio retention, location sharing, center sharing, match-maker visibility, data access/erasure. |
| H · Center Connection | Select center, connect/disconnect, assigned specialist, center access permissions, handover history, sensitive-data filtering. |
| I · Rooms Preferences (not room creation) | Joined rooms, leave room, country/city preference, language preference, event notifications, report settings. |
| J · Match-maker Preferences | Opt-in/out, profile visibility, city-level location, visible fields, request permissions, pause discovery. |
The trusted circle is the private support network around one loved one. Caregiver management (add/remove, permissions, temporary access, schedules) lives inside Settings category C, scoped by permission so that adding a caregiver does not hand over account ownership.
Consent and privacy controls live in Settings category G: what data is used, who sees what, voice/audio retention, location sharing, center sharing, Match-maker visibility, and data access/erasure. Consent is the legitimacy layer for every care feature. (Enforcement mechanics are in the Technical Architecture.)
Not part of every family's default experience. It exists only when a family chooses to connect with a rehabilitation center and consents to professional access. The center adds professional continuity on top of the core product — it never gates the core.
Either a center recommends Zarela to a family, or a family selects a center later from inside the app — at onboarding or any time. Once the family consents, the center assigns a staff member to the case (family + person). The family may disconnect or change center per consent, policy, and audit rules.
A center is an organization (tenant). Its specialist accounts are org-owned: the center owns the professional case relationship and staff-assignment records, while access to the loved one's personal context remains permissioned, purpose-limited, and filtered.
A center may manage multiple cases. If it changes the assigned person, it reassigns the case to new staff; the new staff member does not start from zero — the system preserves the previous helper/teacher/coach's relevant work history and continuity context. Every reassignment and access is recorded in the Audit Log.
The center has its own Zarela assistant that knows the permitted support context for a case. It helps staff ask questions during handover and continue support smoothly — answering from permitted support context, not unrestricted private history.
The system detects sensitive/private topics. If a center or staff member requests data that should not be shared, the system does not provide it and shows a privacy-protection message instead. Access is org-scoped and purpose-limited; consent-backed and audited.
One chat engine hosts five conversation types with different rules. The type determines whether Zarela joins, whether memory is written, and whether care/safety monitors — so ordinary chatting and a supervised, protected interaction coexist on the same product. In early stages the person does not freely search for or initiate peer connections; all matching is support-person-mediated.
| Type | Members | Zarela present | Care/Safety | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Circle chat | Person + trusted circle | Yes — companion | On | The core experience. |
| Standard chat | Family/caregiver ↔ outside contacts | No | Off | Ordinary person-to-person chat for non-person personas. The person persona cannot do free out-of-circle chat. |
| Family-to-family chat | Two Responsible Support Persons (after both accept) | No | Off | Opened by the Match-maker once both families accept; opens before the peer chat. |
| Supervised peer connection | Two matched autistic adults | Yes — mediator | On (heightened) | Opens only after both Responsible Support Persons approve. Mediator + care active; easy block/report; escalation. |
| Official Community Room | Families, support persons, caregivers (per policy), invited professionals, Zarela moderators | Optional — room assistant | Moderation + policy | Company-created only. Must not bypass Match-maker for direct peer connection. |
The first release is the direct-family core, working end-to-end with no center. It is production-quality for what it includes — not an MVP.
The detailed phase-by-phase sequencing and acceptance criteria are in the Project Management Plan.
| Capability | What it adds | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Safe interest Timeline | Curated, filtered, interest-based feed as a safer alternative to open feeds. | FUTURE (safety-reviewed) |
| Global communication | Every participant communicates in their own language — family-to-family, caregiver/coach, online teacher. | FUTURE |
| Rooms / Community | Company-created community spaces and events; non-core, company-managed. | FUTURE |
| Optional Center layer | Specialist app, case management, staff reassignment, Center Zarela Assistant. | OPTIONAL |
| Match-maker | Family-mediated peer discovery and supervised peer connections. | GATED (DPIA + specialist review) |
| Billing / subscription | Whatever commercial model is later chosen. | FUTURE (model open) |
Unresolved or risky questions are listed here rather than silently resolved. These need a product owner and a decision.
Delivery-level decision gates (provider choices, DPIA timing, production hardening) are tracked in the Project Management Plan.