How it works

From your handbook to a parent's question, traceable end-to-end.

Sam isn't a generic LLM pointed at your website. It's a retrieval pipeline built from scratch around what schools actually need: grounded answers, source citations, escalation when confidence is low, and a transcript of every conversation. Here's what that looks like in practice.

01

What Sam needs from your school to get started.

Most schools already have everything Sam needs. We start from the content you've already written.

  • Your school website (Sam crawls and re-crawls automatically)
  • Your admissions or enrollment handbook (PDF is fine)
  • Your academic and admissions calendars
  • Policy documents you want answered: tuition sheets, lottery rules, dress code, transportation, FA, etc.
  • Optional: an FAQ document you wish your front office could just hand parents

Setup time scales with how organized your content is. Schools that already keep an internal FAQ are typically live in under a week.

Sources Sam ingests
  • · yourschool.org (crawled)
  • · Admissions handbook.pdf
  • · 2026–27 Academic calendar
  • · Tuition & aid sheet
  • · Transportation map
  • · Lottery rules & sibling preference
  • · FAQ document
02

How Sam learns your school.

We don't just point an LLM at your website and call it a day. The retrieval pipeline was built from scratch — no off-the-shelf framework — because the off-the-shelf options hallucinate tuition figures.

  1. Crawl. Sam crawls your website and the documents you've uploaded. Every page becomes a source.
  2. Chunk. Long pages are split semantically — by section, not by character count — so a tuition table doesn't get cut in half.
  3. Embed. Each chunk is embedded and indexed with its source URL preserved.
  4. Manual review. Before you go live, we walk through edge cases — what should happen if a parent asks about something not in your handbook, what should never be answered, what should always escalate.
  5. Re-index. When you update your website or upload new policies, Sam re-indexes automatically. No re-training, no downtime.
01Crawl
02Chunk
03Embed
04Review
05Re-index
03

How Sam answers a question.

Every answer is retrieval-augmented and source-attributed. If Sam isn't confident, it says so — instead of guessing.

  1. Parent asks a question in any language Sam supports.
  2. Sam retrieves the most relevant chunks from your indexed content.
  3. Sam answers in the parent's language, citing the source page the answer came from.
  4. If confidence is low, Sam declines politely and offers to escalate to your team.

This is the part that earns the no-hallucinations claim. Sam can only answer from sources you've approved. It cannot make up tuition figures, application deadlines, or policies that don't exist in your content.

“How much is tuition for 7th grade?”
Source: Tuition & aid sheet, p. 2
Sam quotes the Middle School band, notes the sibling discount, and links the family to the financial aid application.
Cited: tuition-2026.pdf · oakridge.org/admissions/aid
04

When Sam doesn't know, or gets it wrong.

The fear — “what if this embarrasses our school?” — is the right fear. Here's how we address it.

  • Polite decline. If Sam's confidence is low, it says so plainly and offers to route the parent to your team.
  • Escalation routing. Configurable handoff to email or your front office, with the parent's question and contact info attached.
  • Knowledge gap reporting. Weekly email of every question Sam couldn't answer, so you know what's missing from your site.
  • Transcript review. Every conversation is browsable. You can search, flag, and correct — the corrections feed back into Sam's sources.
Weekly knowledge gap report
  • 14דDo you offer after-care?”Add to handbook
  • “Bus from East Orange?”Add to transport map
  • “Lottery for kindergarten?”Update FAQ
Example report. Real reports use your school's data.
05

What you see on your end.

Your admin dashboard. Browse every conversation, manage sources, see what your families are actually asking week-over-week.

  • Conversation transcripts with full search
  • Source management — upload, refresh, retire documents
  • Knowledge gap report (also emailed weekly)
  • Per-conversation thumbs-up / thumbs-down feedback from parents
  • CSV export of leads and transcripts
Sam · AdminWireframe placeholder
Conversations this week
Replaced with your data
Top questions
Knowledge gaps
Replaced with your data
Source health
Replaced with your data
Real screenshots replace this on the production site. We deliberately don't show example metrics here — the dashboard is a tool, not a brag.
06

How you go live.

One week, end-to-end, for schools that already have their content organized. We do the setup; you review and approve.

  1. Day 1 — Kickoff. 30-minute call. You hand off your handbook, calendar, and policy documents. We start the crawl.
  2. Days 2–4 — Indexing & tuning. We ingest, chunk, and tune. We run sample questions across your content and flag any thin areas.
  3. Day 5 — Review. We walk you through the dashboard and a transcript of test conversations. You flag anything that should never be said and anything that should always escalate.
  4. Day 6–7 — Launch. Single line of script on your site. Sam is live. You watch the first day of real conversations from the dashboard.

Schools with messier content take longer. We'll tell you on the kickoff call which week you're in.

Day 1
Kickoff
Day 2
Indexing
Day 3
Tuning
Day 4
Review
Day 5
Launch
Day 6
Live
07

Data, FERPA, and security.

Sam is designed for FERPA-aware data handling. Final compliance review with your school before any production deployment.

  • PII redaction on inbound messages before they hit logs.
  • Configurable retention. Default 90 days; configurable down or up to your policy.
  • Audit log of admin actions: who exported what, who edited what source, when.
  • No training on your data. Your school's content is used to retrieve answers for your school. It's never used to train shared models.
  • Hosting. US-based. Per-tenant data isolation.

Full security details live on /security (in progress — ask us for the current write-up if you need it for IT review).

  • PII redaction
  • Configurable retention (default 90d)
  • Admin audit log
  • No training on your data
  • Per-tenant data isolation
  • US-based hosting

See it on your school's content.

20 minutes on a call. We'll show you a live demo trained on your school's real info. No commitment, no slide deck.

Book a 20-minute demo