Crisis is the moment when a normal banking app makes you go look something up. Holdwell puts the right number on screen before you've finished typing. The flow is built around how a relapse actually unfolds, not how a marketing page imagines it.
Crisis detection runs on the chat (classifier on every message), on the card (a cluster of attempted gambling spend in a short window), and on behaviour (a streak break followed by an out-of-pattern night spend). Any of the three opens the crisis path. Two opens it loudly.
Keywords alone would miss the relapses that show up as silence and spend, and catch the ones where someone is venting about a film they watched. We tuned for the signals real cases share.
When the path opens you see three things at once: a direct call button to the right UK helpline (GamCare 24/7 for gambling, Samaritans 116 123 for self-harm), an Anna chat that won't close, and a one-tap option to bring your sponsor circle in or keep them out. You decide who knows.
Behind the screen, an L2 clinical reviewer is paged and the session is queued for review inside an hour. You see exactly what they were sent.
A crisis event opens a 72-hour Relapse Hold on the card by default: stricter MCC blocks, lower daily limits, no new transfers without sponsor co-sign. You can ask Anna to extend the Hold if it's not enough. You cannot shorten it. Calm future-you wrote that rule.
The Hold lifts itself when it's done. Anna runs a short check-in before the first off-Hold morning to make sure the rails feel right.