It knows the door. It never claims the key.
Billions in earned benefits go unclaimed every year — EITC, SNAP, WIC, Medicaid, LIHEAP, Lifeline — largely because the rules are scattered across a dozen agencies. Threshold takes a coarse picture of a situation and surfaces which programs' published rules are worth checking: the rule the office applies, where to apply, and who actually decides.
Request a live demo The design lineWhy "never says you qualify" is the whole design
A screener that outputs "you qualify" has quietly become an eligibility decision — the thing only the administering office is allowed to make. Get it wrong and a person acts on a false promise against an agency. So Threshold is a menu of doors, not a calculator.
| It does | It never does |
|---|---|
| Surfaces programs whose rules are worth checking, by coarse relevance | Says "you qualify," "you're eligible," or "you're approved" |
| Shows the published rule the office applies, cited and dated | Computes a pass/fail against a limit |
| Shows your entered figure next to the cited figure, source shown | Pronounces which side of the line you fall on |
| Names the office that decides, and how to apply | Predicts approval or estimates a benefit amount |
| Routes to free application help | Tells you which program you should apply for |
Deliberately inclusive, deliberately deterministic
Over-showing is safe; missing is the failure
Relevance keys on situation flags you pick about yourself — works, has children, senior, low income band — never on a number the tool tests against a threshold. It's a menu: an extra door costs a glance; a missed door costs a benefit.
No model in the decision path
Program facts live only in a cited corpus — each with a citation, source URL, effective date, and last-verified stamp. The screener is deterministic; the guard blocks any verdict, amount, prescription, or comparative conclusion, and fails closed to a neutral routing line.
The transparent comparison
Where a program carries a figure table and you enter your own figure, the card shows the two numbers side by side with the figure's own citation — no comparator words, no conclusion. The qualify/deny call stays with the office, always.
Who it's for
Benefits navigators, community organizations, and legal-aid intake desks that need a defensible answer to "what should this person go ask about?" — without ever issuing an eligibility opinion.
Honest status, in writing
The working core is machine-verified by a 65-assertion self-check, including the guard that blocks verdict wording.
Before this screens a real person
- The corpus lists real federal programs with real citations, but specific dollar limits change yearly and vary by state — every figure is SAMPLE until verified against the cited source and dated.
- A benefits specialist or legal-aid partner reviews the rule statements and posture before launch — a named gate, not a hope.
- If a free-text intake model is ever added, it ships disabled behind a no-training gate.
See a screener that refuses to say "you qualify" — on purpose.
The live demo runs the real guard on sample data, including the wording it blocks. Fifteen minutes, no slides.
Request a demo