Safety first

Some conversations shouldn’t be coached. Porcupine watches for them, and puts safety first.

For example

Porcupine · a tipIt sounds like you might not feel safe. Before anything else, here’s who you can talk to.

How Porcupine uses it

Every message is checked for threats, deception, no-contact situations, crisis and safety concerns before anything is reworded.
Porcupine won’t reword a threat, help deceive or manipulate someone, help make someone feel bad on purpose, or help contact someone who has asked for no contact.
If you might be in crisis or unsafe, it puts support first, and you choose whether to continue.
For legal matters like custody or a workplace complaint, it points you to people who can help.

Why it helps

Coaching a conversation assumes two people who can speak freely. When one is afraid of the other, or someone is in crisis, helping them “communicate better” can do harm. Family mediators are expected to screen for abuse and control, and to stop or change the process when it’s there. Porcupine checks every message for threats, deception, no-contact situations, crisis and safety concerns before any rewording, and puts support first. These checks can miss things, so they’re a safeguard, not a guarantee.

What we don’t know yet

No automatic check is perfect, and safety screening in a text app is new. We test these checks against more than a hundred example messages. If you’re in danger, call 911.

See it in a conversation

How to message your co-parent about a schedule changeCo-parents
How to sort out shared bills and subscriptions with your exExes
How to talk to an aging parent about drivingParents and adult children
How to give a coworker feedback without making it personalTeammates
How to ask your landlord for a repairLandlords and tenants
How to talk to your contractor about delays or work that isn’t rightAs the client

More guides ›

The research

From practice

Professional standards for family mediators say they should screen each person separately for domestic abuse, including coercive control, before and throughout mediation, and suspend or end it when someone can’t take part safely.

Association of Family and Conciliation Courts. (2025). Model Standards for Family and Divorce Mediation, Standard V: Domestic Abuse, and Standard XI: Termination.

Studied with adults in general

A review of 13 studies found no evidence that asking about suicide increases suicidal thoughts. Talking about it may reduce them.

Dazzi, T., Gribble, R., Wessely, S., & Fear, N. T. (2014). Does asking about suicide and related behaviours induce suicidal ideation? What is the evidence? Psychological Medicine, 44(16), 3361–3363.

Library last updated October 2026.