The plan
Here's the next five years in Allen County.
Lima Link lets you text one number and reach every business in town at once, instead of calling them one at a time.
Phase 1
Volunteers
Food pantries, shelters and churches sign up first. When one needs help, it texts the number and every signed-up volunteer sees the request.
Volunteers browse the open requests, pick what they want, and text back to claim it. This works with even a few dozen people signed up — that's why it goes first.
Phase 2
Businesses
Local businesses sign up. Each gets an AI agent that answers requests for it, using the business's own rules: what jobs it takes, how far it travels, what it charges to show up.
Accepted jobs go straight into the business's scheduling software, or arrive as a text — the owner's choice. Prices, books and customer lists never leave the business.
Phase 3
Neighbors
The number opens to everyone. Need a plumber, a tow, a leak fixed? Call or text, say so in your own words, and every local business that does that kind of work hears you at once. The first one free to help takes the job.
A number nobody answers is worse than no number at all. This one stays closed until enough shops are on it to pick up.
Phase 4
Built here
Lima gets its own social media, its own business software, and its own AI — run from Allen County, so what happens here isn't watched, sold, or switched off by companies on the other side of the world.
Your posts and questions stay in the county. No faraway boardroom decides what Lima sees, what it pays, or whether the lights stay on. The AI that answers the number belongs to the town it serves.
Phase 5
Open source
We publish the source code and the setup instructions for the whole system, free.
Any other town can run its own copy without paying Lima Link anything.
Every stage above waits on the same thing — enough local names to start. That's what the list is for.
Be on it the day it opens.
Free to join, nothing to install, no obligation. We email you about Lima Link and nothing else, and one reply takes you off the list.
What it is all for