Rescue Writer

Every year 6.5 million animals end up in shelters across America.

Less than half get adopted.

Animals with bios are 10X more likely to get adopted than those without.

What is Rescue Writer?

Rescue Writer is an AI-powered platform designed to eliminate the most time-consuming part of the rescue process: writing pet biographies. It serves as a digital copywriter for hundreds of resource-strapped shelters, ensuring every animal gets a professional-grade introduction to potential adopters.

PetSmart Charities decided to sponsor the project. PetSmart is the largest specialty pet retailer in North America, operating over 1,660 stores across the U.S. & Canada. With over $10 billion in annual revenue and 55,000 employees, the company commands nearly 30% of the U.S. pet store market share

Think fast. Work faster.

A major challenge was the 6-week timeline

We had only 6 weeks total to conceive of, design, code and deploy the product which meant that we had to be agile and move fast. UX research had to be done in a matter of days instead of weeks and we had no time for dead ends.

RESEARCH

Designign for a vulnerable audience

Who is it for and what do they need?

The tool’s primary audience is Shelter Staff. Shelters are primarily staffed by volunteers which means they are emotionally invested in being there. They face a number of hurdles on a daily basis including exposure to suffering and trauma. In addition to physical challenges, they face operational and logistical challenges like understaffing and limited resources (like outdated hardware).

They likely feel ill-equipped to help with regards to the creativity it takes to come up with engaging bios for hundreds of pets.

I mapped out their challenges and emotional journey

... and distilled them down to three principal needs

Simplicity is key

The job was to make an experience that was dead simple to use and would take less than 1 minute to go through.

Mobile-First

The experience had to work on any device - especially smaller screens or outdated monitors as shelters do not have up-to-date hardware.

Maximized Output

To ensure success, people needed to get what they need from as little input as possible - which meant little to no typing.

DESIGN

Overcoming Paralysis

The blank page is the greatest block to overcome in writing something so a structured “mad-libs” style approach was decided upon. This would walk them through the process and take the burden off of the user.

Simplicity was paramount

User interface mockups for Pet Adoption Author app showing input fields for pet details, traits, tone of voice, point of view, and bio generation button with sample generated bios.

Four screenshots of the Pet Adoption Author app interface showing forms to enter pet details, select traits, tone of voice, and point of view to generate a pet adoption bio.

The beauty of working within the PetSmart design system

Designing the LLM

Great care was taken in creating the guardrails for the LLM. More effort was put in what NOT to say than what TO say. Hallucination was strictly forbidden, but creativity was encouraged. This was a fine line to walk, technically.

The Rescue Writer engine was engineered for "Selective Optimism." We built a multi-layered architecture that programmatically filtered behavioral red flags into positive growth opportunities. Users could toggle between four distinct narrative personas (Heartfelt, Comedic, Heroic, or Magical) ensuring every bio felt custom-made. To prevent hallucinations, we implemented a mandatory validation gate: the LLM required at least one verified trait to anchor the story, ensuring every narrative remained grounded in reality.

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