Rhizal
A lightweight tool for building community on Signal and WhatsApp.
Try It Out
Send a Signal message to @rhizal.71
Connect Group Threads
With Rhizal, group threads can message one another using hashtags.
Say your community has a group thread for Boston and one for NYC.
Anyone in the Boston thread can send a message to the NYC thread by including #nyc in a message.
This lets you have many focused, secure conversations rather than one large, overwhelming conversation.
Onboard New Members
With Rhizal, you can easily set up scripts to welcome people to your community with a message or a video.
As they join, you can ask them questions to learn more about them.
Once they've joined, it's easy to send them a personalized welcome.
Data collected during onboarding is stored securely, and can easily be stored on servers you control.
Invite Them To Events
With Rhizal, it's easy to invite your community to events.
They can RSVP by saying "yes" to the invite.
When they do, they'll get a calendar invitation.
This easy discovery and registration process means more people will know what's happening and show up.
Raise Funds
With Rhizal, you can invite your most engaged members to contribute at exactly the right moment.
Compared to community-wide asks over SMS and Email, these targeted asks have a much higher conversion rate.
This means that you can mobilize more resources while building trust.
Collect Stories and Data
With Rhizal, you can ask engaging questions to your community about the connections they are forming and the ways that they are caring for one another.
Compared to longer surveys, these short chat engagements have a much higher response rate.
This creates a powerful way to understand what is happening in your community and report on impact.
Who's Behind Rhizal?
Rhizal is an open source project of Relationality Lab.
It is an experiment in helping people who build community better understand and connect with the people they serve.
It is currently in alpha and is available by invitation only.
Becuase Rhizal is still in early development it should not yet be considered secure, and should be used for light experimentation only.
To follow our work or see if you're eligible for an invitation, please send a Signal message to @rhizal.71
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Rhizal work?
Rhizal makes it easy for community organizers to build a chatbot for WhatsApp and/or Signal.
When community members message this chatbot directly it onboards them.
After onboarding, it relays messages to the organizer or to a bare-bones secure AI.
The chatbot can also be invited into group threads.
Once invited, it will ask the group to come up with a hashtag.
It will then ignore everything said in the group unless it contains a hashtag.
If Rhizal detects a hashtag, it will forward the message to the appropriate group and then forget it.
In what ways is Rhizal secure? What are the limits to its security?
Rhizal conducts all messaging through Signal or WhatsApp, which are both end-to-end encrypted.
WhatsApp makes the metadata of who is talking to who available to Meta, while Signal does not store this metadata.
Messages sent in groups are forwarded by the system and then deleted.
Note that while these messages are ignored or forgotten, for now they are not end-to-end encrypted. At present, Rhizal decrypts the messages check them for hashtags and to forward them. This is one reason why Rhizal should not yet be used for sensitive applications.
By default, messages sent to the chatbot are logged and are visible to the organizer and to the Rhizal team.
These messages can be optionally stored in a database controlled by the organizer or encrypted so they are not visible to the Rhizal team.
Because Rhizal is an experimental product it has yet to go through rigorous security review and should not yet be used in sensitive contexts.
What is a "bare-bones secure AI"?
By default Rhizal is AI-free, both for security and so organizers can directly control the language sent to their community.
Optionally, Rhizal can forward messages to a quantized (dumbed down) Large Language Model run on a server that the Rhizal team controls.
This allows for basic LLM functionality without the cost or security issues associated with a large chatbot provider.
How do I set up Rhizal?
There are two ways to set up Rhizal:
- Message @rhizal.71 on Signal to introduce yourself to our team and discuss options for setup. We are providing this as a free or low-cost service to values-aligned communities and movement groups.
- Fork the Rhizal repository and set up your own instance.