Many Hands
Many hands make light work. Keeping families connected. Making care simple.
Many Hands is a private family coordination app for supporting an ageing parent or relative. A family creates a Care Circle around one person, invites relatives and helpers with the right level of access, and shares visits, lifts to appointments, household jobs, contacts and documents in one place.
Many Hands is not a medical app. It doesn't diagnose, monitor health or contact emergency services.
What's in this first version
- Accounts: sign up, sign in, password reset, data download, account deletion
- Care Circles: create a circle, invite people by link, five roles (administrator, family member, contributor, helper, supported person), change access, pause or remove someone
- Home dashboard: coordination status (all good, attention needed, urgent family action), today, needs attention, next two weeks, family workload, recent activity
- Tasks: categories, due dates and times, repeating tasks, "I'll do it", hand back, mark done, comments, family-only tasks
- Appointments: "Does Mum need transport?" creates a driving task, and the appointment shows who's driving
- Check-ins: check in and out, how they are, notes, missed check-in banner with "mark as expected"
- Calendar: day, week and month views
- Contacts, emergency information (999 and NHS 111 always shown), home and maintenance record, documents (PDFs and photos, private storage), activity timeline, access log
- Simplified large-text screen for the supported person, with "How are you today?" and "I need help"
- Restricted screen for helpers: only their visits, the address, how to get in and one contact
Permissions are enforced by the database (Supabase row-level security), not just hidden on screen. npm run test:db runs 81 checks, for example that a cleaner can't see appointments, a contributor can't see family-only tasks, and an outsider can't see anything by changing a link.
Letter reading, playbooks and shared costs
- Letters: photograph a letter and Many Hands suggests tasks with deadlines. Nothing is added until someone confirms. To switch on automatic reading, create an API key at console.anthropic.com and add it in Vercel as
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, then redeploy. Without it, letters are still saved to Documents and the sample letter still works.
- Guided setup: a few easy questions (children, homes, who helps, a normal week in your own words), then Many Hands drafts the whole setup: children, homes and pattern, invitations, regular jobs, dates, contacts and guides. People untick what they don't want before anything is created. With
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY set, the AI helper reads what they typed in their own words; without it, the setup is drafted from their answers alone.
- Ask Many Hands: a help chat (the ? button, or More → Ask Many Hands) that answers how-to questions from Many Hands' own help guide, with links to the right screen. With the API key it answers in plain language; without it, it finds the closest guide answer.
- AI limits: each person can use the AI helper a set number of times a day (6 setups, 40 questions, 30 letters), so costs stay predictable. Change them in
src/lib/ai.ts.
- Playbooks: Attendance Allowance, coming home from hospital, Blue Badge, lasting power of attorney, council tax discounts, and after a death. Each step links to GOV.UK or NHS.uk. Review them every few months, because rules change. They live in
src/lib/playbooks.ts.
- Shared costs: who paid for what and the fewest payments to settle up. Visible to administrators and family only.
The database changes for these are in supabase/migrations/0002_letters_playbooks_costs.sql, which runs after 0001.
Many Hands for children and co-parents
A family can be set up for children instead of an older relative (choose when you start). Everything above still works, plus:
- Two homes and a schedule: add both homes, pick a usual pattern (2-2-5-5, 2-2-3, week on/week off, every other weekend) and fine-tune any night. Everyone sees where the children sleep tonight, colour-coded on Home and the calendar.
- Swap requests: a parent asks for a change with a reason and an offer in return; another parent agrees or says no. Nothing changes until it's agreed. Grandparents, childminders and the children see the result, not the reasons.
- Handovers: a packing list, a record of what went and what was missing, and notes for the other home.
- Children: school, class, allergies and important notes (shared with childminders), sizes, GP, dentist and passport expiry with a renewal reminder. Where is it? tracks passports, PE kits and chargers between homes.
- Agreements: bedtimes, screens, money and holidays, agreed once by both parents. Shared rules show to grandparents, childminders and the children.
- Costs: an agreed split (for example 50/50 or 60/40), approvals from the other parent, queries, spend per child, and a separate child maintenance record.
- Records: a dated history of requests, answers, costs and handovers, downloadable as a CSV for mediation.
- Views for everyone: grandparents see the schedule and their tasks; childminders see pick-ups, which home to drop off at, allergies and dates shared with them; a 13+ young person gets their own simple view with what to pack, house rules, a way to message their parents and Childline's number.
- Children's playbooks: child passports, taking children abroad, school places, childcare costs, a new baby, making arrangements after separating, and school holidays.
The database changes are in supabase/migrations/0003_children_coparenting.sql. Run it after 0002.
Not built yet
Email and push notifications, the missed check-in escalation chain (notify Sarah, then Anthony), medication reminders, shopping lists, meals, the AI assistant, two-factor sign-in. The database is ready to grow into these.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
