OCSS Specification / CapabilityDraft 4 · pre-release

Alert

Parent-facing notifications, reports, and alerts.

What Alert does

One parent-facing channel for every notification duty in child-safety law.

Every law that requires parental notification — VA SB 854 (notification curfew), NY SAFE for Kids (account creation alerts), MN HF 2 (usage timer notifications), TN HB 1891 (consent change alerts), the Surgeon General’s social-media warning labels (CA SB 976), FTC ECEC reporting — converges on the same primitive: send the parent the right message at the right time, on the right channel.

Alert is the canonical parent-facing notification layer. It batches and prioritizes alerts, respects quiet hours and curfews, deduplicates across platforms (one alert about “Suzy installed TikTok” — not five), surfaces the Surgeon General warning when required, and routes through the parent’s preferred channel (push, SMS, email, in-app).

Parents stop being notification-bombed by every individual platform. Regulators get a single audit-trail showing every alert was delivered. Phosra’s Receipt captures the proof of delivery.

How partners plug in

Alert is a socket. Events flow in. Delivered alerts flow out.

These are the downstream delivery providers and curriculum partners Alert routes through — either shipping today, in conversation with a partner, or pending an upstream API.

Powered byAlert
APNs (Apple Push Notification service) + FCM (Firebase Cloud Messaging) — push delivery infrastructureMappings shipped
Powered byAlert
Twilio + Postmark + Resend — SMS / email transactional deliveryDesign partner candidate
Powered byAlert
Independent digital literacy curriculum surfaces on block events (in conversation)Mappings shipped
Standards & laws

What Alert does for each statute.

  • KOSA (notification duties)— surfaces every algorithmic exposure event for parental review.
  • VA SB 854— enforces notification curfew during configured quiet hours.
  • NY SAFE for Kids— alerts parents on account-creation and addictive-feed exposure.
  • MN HF 2 (usage timer)— surfaces real-time usage and remaining-time alerts.
  • TN HB 1891— sends parent alerts on consent changes and high-risk events.
  • CA SB 976 (Surgeon General Warning Labels)— injects the social-media warning interstitial every 30 minutes.
  • FTC Disney Settlement / ECEC reporting— produces the per-event delivery confirmation log.
Conformance

Adopter Tier 1 certification.

To ship Alert-conformance for an Adopter Tier 1 certification, your implementation must pass the Alert suite. Test count is [draft] coming Q3 2026. The suite covers cross-platform deduplication, quiet-hours and curfew honoring, channel-routing correctness, and proof-of-delivery emission to Receipt.

We are co-authoring the suite with our design partners. If you want a seat at the table while the bar is being set, reach out.

Rule list

The 14 rules Alert ships

Every rule below is implemented by this capability. Pulled directly from the rule registry.

  • Educational CreditCredits time spent on whitelisted educational apps back to the user's screen-time budget.
  • Activity MonitoringProvides parental visibility into app usage, content accessed, and online activity patterns.
  • Monitoring AlertsDelivers parent-facing alerts when configured monitoring rules trigger on a minor account.
  • Social Account Content MonitoringMonitors content a child posts or receives across linked social accounts for concerning material.
  • Message Content MonitoringMonitors message and DM content (including images) for concerning material and surfaces flagged items.
  • Image Content MonitoringScans images a child sends, receives, or saves for concerning visual content.
  • Search Query MonitoringMonitors search queries and viewed results for risky or concerning topics.
  • Flagged Content DigestPeriodic digest of flagged content and activity surfaced to the parent or guardian.
  • Usage TimerSends configurable screen time alerts and enforces daily usage limits across platforms.
  • Parental Event NotificationNotifies the parent in real time when an account is created or a flagged content event is observed.
  • Screen Time ReportGenerates and delivers the parent-facing weekly screen-time report across every connected device.
  • Social Media Warning LabelRenders the Surgeon General-style social media warning label on every session entry for minors.
  • Digital Literacy Curriculum LinkSurfaces age-appropriate digital-literacy curriculum links to parents alongside enforcement events.
  • School Alert RoutingRoutes a self-harm or harm-class alert from school to the parent-chosen vendor with the consent assertion attached.
Implement it

Implementing Alert? Talk to us.