sobr

An AI companion for people navigating sobriety. Not a therapist, not a chatbot — a grounded friend that actually gets it.

Built with Next.js, Prisma, and Claude.

🚧 Status: backend complete, frontend in progress.

Why

Most mental health and recovery apps default to clinical tone, gamification, or daily affirmations that get stale fast. sobr is designed differently: a casual, warm, direct conversational presence that matches the user's emotional register without spiraling with them. It only brings up recovery when the user does — except in crisis moments, where it shifts immediately and clearly.

Features

• AI chat — Streaming conversations powered by Claude, personalized with check-in history and preferences.
• Daily check-ins — Track mood, energy, and cravings over time.
• Framework support — Biblical, 12-step, both, or secular. Adapts to the user's approach.
• Crisis handling — Detects acute risk signals (suicidal ideation, intent to harm, overdose risk, dangerous withdrawal) and shifts tone immediately, surfacing 988, Crisis Text Line, SAMHSA, and 911 with clear, direct language.

Safety architecture

Crisis handling is the highest-stakes path in the app. sobr uses a tiered approach rather than a single keyword-match:

• A lightweight classifier evaluates each user message for risk signals in parallel with the conversational model.
• The main conversational model receives the classifier's signal as context, enabling it to shift register without losing the conversational thread.
• All flagged interactions are logged for auditability.

This design separates safety vigilance from conversational tone, so the friend-first voice never has to compete with crisis detection in a single prompt.

Tech stack

• Framework: Next.js 16 (App Router)
• Database: PostgreSQL + Prisma ORM
• AI: Anthropic Claude (streaming)
• Auth: JWT (bcrypt + jose)
• Validation: Zod
• UI: Tailwind CSS + shadcn/ui

Getting started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• PostgreSQL database
• Anthropic API key

Setup

npm install

Create a .env file in the project root:

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://user:password@localhost:5432/sobr"
JWT_SECRET="<generate a 32+ byte random string>"
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="<your Anthropic API key>"

Generate a strong JWT_SECRET with: openssl rand -base64 32

Run migrations and start the dev server:

npx prisma migrate dev
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000.

API routes

Method	Route	Auth	Description
POST	/api/users	No	Create account
GET	/api/users	Yes	Get current user profile
PATCH	/api/users	Yes	Update profile
DELETE	/api/users	Yes	Delete account
POST	/api/auth/login	No	Login, returns JWT
POST	/api/chat	Yes	Send message, streams response
GET	/api/chat-messages	Yes	Get chat history (paginated)
POST	/api/check-in	Yes	Create check-in
GET	/api/check-in	Yes	Get check-in history

License

Source-available under the terms of the LICENSE file. All rights reserved.