The build — Slate

The official form, reverse-engineered

The PDF engine reproduces the official form exactly. The state reviewer sees the document they have always seen; only the way it gets made changed.

Six pages, 47 fields, four signature blocks — every field catalogued with who enters it, where it is born, who verifies it; the three circulating template versions reconciled into one pinned layout (finding K3, resolved). The complete requirements were the real work: three passes with the office coordinator before a line of the form engine was built.

The interface

The two screens a worker uses, the one screen the office uses, and the output. Drawn from the build — illustrative renderings, not captures.

Sign-in is a magic link by email or a code by text — no passwords exist. Approval on the office screen is what generates, files, and stages the packet (the approval configuration below). The output page is the pinned state layout, revision 2025-11; a full packet runs six pages.

Findings into rules

Every rule is deterministic, written in plain language, and confirmed by the person who owns it — no black box. A sample of the 19:

• R1
  Time in 15-minute steps; overlaps cannot save — the unit the program bills in.confirmed: office manager
• R2
  Reminders go out before the Sunday 20:00 deadline — Saturday 10:00, Sunday 17:00; the overdue view opens Monday 08:00, with names.new rule — born from audit finding K1
• R3
  An incomplete packet cannot submit — missing signature, missing outcome note, untied mileage: the three things that caused most returns.confirmed: office coordinator
• R4
  Ceiling overruns flag at entry and block at approval — overrides are supervisor-only, logged with a reason.new rule — born from audit finding K2
• R5
  Notes are checked against the current plan — plan updates land dated; a note is never reviewed against a stale outcome.new rule — born from audit finding K5
• R6
  The official PDF generates only from the pinned state revision — a layout change is a versioned, human act in one place.new rule — born from audit finding K3

System integration — one replacement, zero migrations elsewhere

Slate replaced the generic forms platform and connected to everything else exactly where it already was.

Sign-in for a field workforce: a magic link by email or a code by text — no passwords exist. Workers onboarded in two waves, the senior DSP’s cohort first; paper stayed accepted throughout the transition.

The parallel run — two weeks beside the old way

For the last two build weeks, both systems produced the week: workers entered their real packets in Slate while the office ran the old process, and the outputs were compared line by line.

• Week 370 packets in both systems · 9% differed — three rules fixed: mileage rounding, an assistance-type mapping, and the overnight shift split at midnight.
• Week 471 packets · 1.4% differed — one worker’s paper habit, resolved in onboarding, not in code.
• AcceptanceA full week with zero re-keying and the generated PDF matching the official form field for field — the roadmap’s written criterion. Cutover; the $5,000/month platform canceled the same day, and not a day earlier.

The approval configuration

Who checks, who decides. Below the line, nothing becomes official without a person.

The one layer deliberately missing: AI. The drafted note-guidance assist shipped switched off, behind the agency’s written compliance gate — see document 06.