NeighborhoodText

An idea inspired by my neighborhood watch captain

Overview

The idea is to create an easy way for a group of neighbors to have their own SMS group chat. My neighborhood watch captain collected the neighbor's phone numbers and had to create a new group chat everytime a new person wanted to join the chat. This was a problem because chat history would be lost and the new group chats would get confusing and cluttered. I wanted to find a way to create an SMS group chat where neighbors could join and leave the chat as needed.

Goals

My main goal is to practice and build a POC.

A couple of sub goals:

Non-programming stuff (mostly)

• Communication check. Write a well-communicated README that explains what I want to do, how I want to do it, and probably how I'm revising it along the way.
• Step out from VS Code and try out Cursor. I know it's not a huge leap, but I want to try a little AI help.
• That being said, try not to use too much AI. Cursor is trying to write this README for me and I need to keep fighting the urge to accept all the autocompletes.
• DevContainers. I really think the idea is novel and I hope it lends itself to simulating the production container as close as possible.
• Git check. How small are my commits? Too small? Too big? This one is probably too big already.
• Be realistic about how much I can actually do by myself. I can see myself managing a team to get this project done, so I'm using it as a reflection of how much I can do by myself with everything else going on in my daily life.

Programming stuff

• Writing some Python. Trying out some of the newer features I didn't get to use in my last job. Getting more reps.
• Working with the Twilio API. I've never used an API for SMS messaging in the way that I have it in my mind. I think I can do it with Twilio, but I can already foresee some non-technical roadblocks (mainly the A2P 10DLC restrictions)
• Try out FastAPI. I've only worked with Django and Flask before.
• Get some reps with GitHub Actions
• Polish up my Docker/Kubernetes skills.

Let's see how it goes.

How I'd like this to work

I think the flow should go as follows:

1. The neighborhood captain/chat owner creates a new group chat
   • A new phone number is provisioned for the Neighborhood Text
   • The captain invites neighbors to sign up to be part of the Neighborhood Text
2. A neighbor signs up to be part of the Neighborhood Text
   • The neighbor receives a text with a link to sign up
   • The neighbor clicks the link and is asked to enter their phone number, name, and address
   • The captain is notified of the new neighbor and either:
     • The neighbor's request is approved:
       • The neighbor's phone number is added to the Neighborhood Text
     • The neighbor's request is denied:
       • The neighbor is notified that they are not part of the Neighborhood Text
3. The captain and all other neighbors can now text each other

There probably needs to be some sort of admin panel or dashboard for things like:

• Seeing all the neighbors who are part of the Neighborhood Text
• Being able to add/remove neighbors from the Neighborhood Text
• There's probably a money component involved since we gotta pay Twilio for the number and messages
• Delegating more captains or assigning a new captain
• Basically RBAC 😩

Architecture

Alpha

Some thoughts I'm jotting down here:

• NeighborhoodText service sits between a UI and the Twilio API
• It should be responsible for the sign up of the captain and the neighbors
• It should be responsible for provisioning a new phone number by interacting with the Twilio API
• Once the number is provisioned and neighbors are signed up, Twilio should handle the SMS stuff.
• Probably will need to store everything in a DB. Relational probably makes sense, I can see where I might want to use a KV store later on. Maybe the 10DLC as a key, value is a list of all the phone numbers belonging to the group?

As I'm thinking about this more, my initial POC is probably building out this NeighborhoodText service exposing a REST API. As I'm not versed in building front-ends, I'll probably use AI to build it for me. I will probably just Dockerize it with a plain Docker file then move to a Docker Compose file as I see fit.

this cracked me up I forgot that I hadn't changed my .gitconfig and it still had all my old work GitHub stuff in there. So the previous commit us under another git user. OOPS.