Working a step

Open any step from the plan and you get its own page: the title and description at the top, the target it is aimed at, the draft in the middle, and the completion and outcome controls at the bottom.

Three of the four kinds produce something to write. Local action steps do not — they happen in person, so the editor just tells you to use the description as your brief and come back to tick it off.

Before drafting a letter or a petition, Voci usually asks you two to four short questions under Make it personal. They are things only you know — how this affects you day to day, something specific you witnessed, how long you have lived there, what outcome you actually want.

Every question is optional. Answer the ones you want and press Write my draft, or take Skip — just write it and get the draft immediately. Personalize brings the questions back later.

Sometimes no questions appear. Voci skips them when personalization would not make that particular draft better, and it falls back to drafting immediately rather than blocking you.

Generate draft writes the letter or script, streaming word by word so you can read as it goes. Regenerate throws it away and writes a fresh one — useful when the tone is off more than the content.

For a letter, Voci wants to know who it is writing to first. If you have not given an address, or the step needs a local official Voci does not have, you will see a prompt to add one before drafting — covered in Representatives & sending.

Drafting is capped at twenty a day.

Letter

150–250 words. First person, polite, structured: greeting, why this matters to me, a specific ask, and a sign-off you fill your name into.

Phone call

Under 120 words. Conversational and easy to read aloud, with one clear ask.

Petition · share

A petition blurb up to 120 words, or a social post under 280 characters.

Local action

No draft — the step description is the brief. Show up, then mark it complete.

Drafts are written in your voice, with no placeholders beyond the signature line, and are told never to invent statistics or quotes. If you want a number in there, check it and add it yourself.

The draft is a text box. Change anything — this is the point, not a fallback. Save draft keeps your version against the step and it will be there when you come back; the editor shows when it was last saved.

One draft is kept per step. Regenerating replaces what is in the box, so if you have edited something you want to keep, copy it out first.

• Copy — puts the draft on your clipboard for anywhere else: your own mail client, a printed letter, a contact form on the official's website.
• Open in email — opens your normal mail app with the draft ready to go.
• Send via email — Voci delivers it to the office directly, with replies routed back to your own address. See Sending a letter.
• For a call — there is nothing to send. Read the script down the phone, then come back and mark it complete.

Once a letter has gone, the editor records who it went to and when, and offers Send again if you need to follow up.

Mark this step complete ticks it off and feeds the progress count on the plan and the impact line on your dashboard. You can untick it again from the plan page.

Completion is your call, not Voci's. A sent letter does not tick itself, because plenty of steps are done in ways Voci never sees.

Once a step is done, What happened? lets you record the result. This is the part almost every civic tool skips, and it is the only way you will remember in three months whether the letter worked.

Awaiting response

Sent, nothing back yet.

Got a reply

The office wrote back.

No response yet

Enough time has passed to call it silence.

Spoke with them

You got a conversation or a meeting out of it.

Resolved

The thing you asked for actually happened.

You can add a note alongside, change it later, or Clear it entirely.

Letters go out with your own address as the reply-to, so a reply arrives in your inbox and nowhere else. Under Responses you can paste it in — or, after a phone call or a meeting, type up what was said. Voci then reads that copy and tells you what you actually got.

Form letter

A template acknowledgement. Restates the topic, promises nothing.

Substantive

Engages with your argument, or gives you real information.

A commitment

They said they would do something specific. Voci quotes it back so you can hold them to it.

Brush-off

Declines to engage, or redirects with nothing behind it.

Referral

Hands you to another office said to handle it.

Hostile

Dismissive or personally disparaging.

Most constituent mail is boilerplate, and Voci will say so rather than read hope into a template. Alongside the verdict you usually get one suggested next step — a follow-up letter naming the question they dodged, a call, a local action — which Add this to my planappends to the end of your step list. When the honest advice is to wait, there is no suggestion.