Just-in-Time Intervention Protocol¶
Protocol — instantiates Kairotic Window Alignment
Delivers help, guidance, persuasion, support, or warning only when the receiver has a live need and enough capacity to use it.
A just-in-time intervention protocol delivers help, guidance, persuasion, support, or warning only when the receiver has both a live need and enough capacity to use it, matching the intervention's type and intensity to the receiver's present state. Its defining idea is the double condition: two things must hold at once — need AND receptivity — and the protocol suppresses delivery when either is absent, even when a real need exists. It is about the fit between help and the live moment. It does not hold launch authority, and it does not enforce a refractory hold after a response; it decides, per moment, whether this receiver can use this help now.
Example¶
A smoking-cessation app models the user's state from phone signals — location near a usual smoking spot, time since last cigarette, self-reported stress, and whether the user is mid-task or idle. This is a just-in-time adaptive intervention.[n1] When the model detects a craving moment (live need) and the user is idle enough to engage (capacity), it delivers a short coping prompt fitted to that moment — a breathing exercise if stress is high, a reframing message if the trigger is boredom. If the need is high but the user is driving (no capacity), the protocol holds, or downgrades to a single haptic nudge that asks nothing. The arc: a continuous state model → need and capacity both present → an intervention fitted to the moment → delivered; if capacity is absent → suppressed or minimized, even though the need is real.
How it works¶
- Requires a double condition — need present and capacity present — before anything is delivered.
- Fits type and intensity to state — a light nudge versus full support, chosen by the current moment.
- Suppresses on absent capacity even when need is high — the distinguishing restraint that separates it from a simple need-detector.
- Adapts continuously from a live receiver-state model rather than a fixed schedule.
Tuning parameters¶
- Need threshold — how strong the live need must be to consider delivery.
- Capacity gate — how much receiver capacity is required; strict avoids annoyance but misses reachable moments.
- Intensity ladder — how the protocol scales from a silent nudge to full support.
- Personalization depth — how much the fit adapts to the individual's history and patterns.
- Escalation ceiling — the hardest push the protocol is permitted before it must back off; a high ceiling reaches a struggling receiver but risks tipping support into pressure.
When it helps, and when it misleads¶
Its strength is that it delivers support at the point of live need — the archetype's ideal case — while avoiding the irritation of help delivered out of context, because the capacity check screens out the wrong moments. The restraint is the value: what makes a just-in-time protocol trustworthy is precisely the moments it chooses not to fire, which is what keeps its signal from decaying into background nagging.
Its failure mode is that an inaccurate state model fires on false need or misreads capacity, so the intervention becomes noise exactly when trust is most fragile; and over-delivery burns the receiver's readiness budget until every prompt is ignored. The classic misuse is escalating intensity to force engagement when the model shows no capacity — need-detection weaponized into nagging. The guarding discipline is to hold delivery when capacity is absent, cap frequency against a readiness budget, and treat repeatedly ignored prompts as evidence the model is wrong rather than the user.
How it implements the components¶
receiving_system_state_model— the protocol runs on a live model of the receiver's need and capacity, updated continuously.action_window_fit_map— it selects the intervention type and intensity that fit the present moment (nudge vs full support).attention_and_readiness_budget— the capacity condition and the frequency cap enforce the receiver's readiness budget as a hard constraint on delivery.
It does not implement timing_authority_and_hold_rule — that's Launch-or-Hold Gate, which assigns who may launch a high-stakes action; nor closing_and_refractory_signal — that's Cooldown After-Action Rule, which suppresses re-firing after the receiver has responded.
Related¶
- Instantiates: Kairotic Window Alignment — the protocol is the point-of-need delivery logic the pattern uses when help must meet both need and capacity.
- Consumes: Readiness Signal Dashboard supplies the state signals the protocol's model reads.
- Sibling mechanisms: Cooldown After-Action Rule · Launch-or-Hold Gate · Prebrief and Activation Cue · Window Expiry Rule · Critical-Moment Playbook · Event-Triggered Outreach Workflow · Readiness Signal Dashboard · Stakeholder Pulse Check · Timing After-Action Review
Editorial Notes¶
Form Classification¶
Form family: Control, Automation & Runtime
Rationale: Just-in-Time Intervention Protocol operates as a live operational control that automatically routes, enforces, adapts, or responds during execution because it delivers help, guidance, persuasion, support, or warning only when the receiver has a live need and enough capacity to use it
Independent corroboration: The frozen evidence defines Just-in-Time Intervention Protocol as 'Delivers help, guidance, persuasion, support, or warning only when the receiver has a live need and enough capacity to use it', so its operative form is Control, Automation & Runtime.
Nearest alternative: Intervention, Treatment & Transformation — A live receiver-state model automatically suppresses or delivers the intervention, so execution-time control dominates treatment content.
Review outcome: Independent reviewer agreement; medium confidence.
Origin Attribution¶
Primary origin: Medicine & Healthcare
Origin pattern: Cross-disciplinary synthesis
Present-day reach: Multi-domain
Rationale: Behavioral theory and context-aware computing are formative, but the named JITAI protocol was formalized as a mobile-health intervention design.
Related originating lineages:
- Human-Computer Interaction — Context-aware computing supplied sensing and delivery at the actionable moment.
- Psychology — Retained as a formative lineage identified independently as primary: Behavioral science developed just-in-time adaptive interventions keyed to momentary need and receptivity.
Review resolution: Behavioral theory and context-aware computing are formative, but the named JITAI protocol was formalized as a mobile-health intervention design. The source supports the selected provenance; the retained alternates record documented formative or independently established lineages, not downstream applicability alone. origin_mode=cross_disciplinary_synthesis because the mechanism joins contributions across those traditions. domain_reach=multi_domain records application breadth separately from origin.
Review outcome: Researched adjudication after independent review; high confidence.
Sources consulted:
- https://academic.oup.com/abm/article/52/6/446/4733473 — Peer-reviewed design framework defining just-in-time adaptive interventions in mobile health and health behavior support.
Notes¶
[n1] Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention (JITAI) — a framework in behavioral science for interventions that adapt the type and timing of support to a person's changing internal and contextual state, delivering support only at moments of both need and receptivity. ↩