The WhatsApp of your research housing, your PhD students, your postdocs, your visiting faculty, answered.

A Thursday in February, 23:05. A postdoctoral researcher has just arrived from Seoul with two suitcases and writes in English that she cannot find the wifi password. At the same time, a visiting professor asks in French whether his wife and daughter can spend the weekend with him, and the PhD student in 3B sends a photo of an oven that will not heat up. There is nobody in the office until nine: the in-house team is two people, maintenance is run by one company and cleaning by another. Bedel answers that WhatsApp: it gives the password in English if it is in your handbook, leaves the visit question to whoever decides if the house rules do not settle it, and opens the oven ticket for the company's technician, with its deadline.

What it is and what it is not. Bedel is support and communication software for the day-to-day of a residence for researchers, graduate students or visiting faculty. It is not the institution's booking or billing system: it does not allocate apartments, sign contracts, issue certificates of stay or open doors. It answers the building's WhatsApp and puts each thing on the phone of whoever handles it: maintenance, cleaning, reception or the person who manages stays.

What the researcher or the team writes: "Just landed. What's the wifi password?" at 23:05

What Bedel does: Answers in English with what the residence has written in its handbook, without waking anyone. If the password is not written down, it does not make it up: the question goes to a person on the relevant shift

What the researcher or the team writes: A photo of an oven that will not heat up, from 3B

What Bedel does: Opens a maintenance ticket with its category and deadline and sends it to the maintenance post, even when that post is a company technician with their own WhatsApp. If the oven in 3B was already fixed in the last twelve months, for another tenant, the technician sees it flagged as repeated

What the researcher or the team writes: "Ma femme et ma fille arrivent samedi, elles peuvent rester ?"

What Bedel does: Answers in French with what your house rules say about visitors and companions. If the rules do not settle it, it does not decide: it puts it on the phone of the right person according to the org chart, with the conversation in front of them

What the researcher or the team writes: "Please don't clean my studio tomorrow, I'm working from home"

What Bedel does: Notes that the studio is not to be cleaned tomorrow and notifies the cleaning post, in-house or contracted; whoever cleans can also check it with /limpieza from their WhatsApp. Urgent cleaning and "come back later" follow the same path

What the researcher or the team writes: "I need a certificate of accommodation for my visa"

What Bedel does: It does not draft it or promise it. It passes the request to a person on the team with the conversation: a document that carries a signature is not written by an AI

What the researcher or the team writes: Reception writes "/paquete para el 4A"

What Bedel does: Logs the delivery under the name of whoever lives in 4A and notifies them on WhatsApp even if they have not written to the residence for days. More in parcels

What the researcher or the team writes: "Do you have a studio from 3 March to 30 June?", from a number that is not the residence's

What Bedel does: Replies with the message the residence left written for people asking about a place, translated into their language, and puts them on the dashboard list with a status. Which studio is free on those dates is not something Bedel knows: the team says so

What the researcher or the team writes: "I'm away Monday to Thursday at a conference"

What Bedel does: Logs the three nights away in the absence log; on Thursday morning it asks "Arriving today?" with two buttons

A researcher residence has no move-in day. There is a PhD student who arrives on Tuesday, a visiting professor who lands on Sunday night and a whole project team that moves in on the 1st. Each of them brings the same questions, and until now the team answered them in each person's language or did not answer them at all, depending on when the flight landed. Bedel answers them with what the residence has written once, in Spanish, and only passes to a person what is not written down.

• Whoever arrives is added to the directory with their mobile number, one by one from the dashboard or with a spreadsheet in the format you already use.
• If they change number (the Spanish SIM card on day two), reception generates a single-use code for them in the dashboard; they send it on WhatsApp from the new number and it is linked to their record.
• A number that is not in the directory gets the general answers from the handbook and can report a fault; anything that belongs to a specific person, such as their parcels, waits until the team confirms who they are.
• The year's room rack, with a different arrival and departure date on every row, is uploaded as it is: more in arrivals and room rack.

In a house of researchers Spanish is not the common language; at most English is, and not for everyone. Bedel answers in the language of the last message it receives and does not touch what must not change along the way: times, links, figures and names go out exactly as written.

• Six languages are tested: Spanish, English, French, Italian, German and Portuguese. The notice that you are talking to an AI assistant is written in nine.
• If a reply was about to go out in Spanish to someone who does not write in Spanish, a second pass translates it; if that pass fails, the original goes out rather than leaving them with no answer.
• Voice notes are turned into text with the default model, up to 10 MB per note.
• The team keeps working in Spanish: the notices it receives, the handbook it writes and the nightly email, which also counts which languages people wrote in that day.

A researcher residence usually has a small in-house team and two contractors: one that fixes and one that cleans. What hurts is not that they take time, it is that nobody knows how much. Bedel turns every notice into a ticket with a time, an owner and a deadline, and the company's technician works from their WhatsApp, with no login to any program.

• The technician accepts, resolves or reopens with buttons and closes with a photo; the researcher knows when it is accepted and when it is resolved.
• A reminder to whoever owns it at 50 % and 85 % of the deadline; an urgent ticket past its deadline sounds again once a day and after three days goes up to management.
• Faults are compared by apartment and by category, not by person: if the same oven fails again for the next tenant, the technician sees it flagged as repeated. The resident does not.
• Cleaning gets the "not today", the "come back later" and urgent requests on their phone, and checks them with /limpieza. The tickets spreadsheet comes out with the columns of your own log; the company as a supplier and the hours it bills are not recorded.

With stays that run from three weeks to a year, occupancy changes every Monday. Bedel does not handle bookings, but it knows who is sleeping in the building from the rack and from what each person reports, and that is useful twice: for the alarm at three in the morning and for closing every stay properly.

• The absence log records conferences and fieldwork trips; on the day someone is due back, in the morning, it asks "Arriving today?" with two buttons.
• Who is inside right now is worked out from last night, tonight and the day's movements; the evacuation plan is downloaded as a spreadsheet with that list.
• When someone leaves, the residence can execute the right to erasure from their record: their conversations, parcels and presence are deleted, their tickets stay without their name and a record of the request is kept.
• A question about the deposit or the last bill is not answered by an AI with a figure that is not written down: it goes to whoever handles money according to the org chart, and no account number or payment link ever goes out through the chat.

Behind every researcher residence there is a university, a research centre or a foundation, with its international office, its legal department and its data protection officer. What they need is to see without touching, and to know which rules apply to them and which do not.

• Every dashboard user has each section hidden, read-only or with permission to manage: the international office can see conversations and tickets without being able to change anything.
• If the owner is a public university or a public-sector foundation, Spanish Act 2/2023 requires it to have an internal reporting system whatever its headcount (art. 13.1, letters d and f); if it is a private entity, from fifty employees (art. 10.1.a). Bedel's confidential channel is a channel for the building: it does not replace the entity's system or the person responsible for it.
• Housing that a university classifies as university housing and assigns to its enrolled students or to its teaching, administrative and service staff falls outside the Urban Leases Act (art. 5.d); the exclusion refers to staff who depend on that university. Outside that case, how a stay fits in is explained under temporary residential lease.
• The database and the functions live in the European Union (Ireland); the AI model runs in the United States under Standard Contractual Clauses, and the data processing agreement is published.

• It is not the booking or billing system: it does not know which apartment is free on given dates, it does not allocate, it does not sign contracts and it does not charge.
• It does not issue certificates of accommodation, invitation letters or paperwork for a visa or for registering at the town hall: the request goes to a person on the team.
• The notices it sends on its own (a repair's status, a parcel, "Arriving today?") and the team's announcements go out in Spanish; what gets translated are the replies to what the researcher writes.
• One account is one residence: a university with three residences has three accounts, with no screen that brings them together.
• It does not control keys, locks or access: who is inside comes from what people report and from the rack.

• Faults and incidents
• Dining hall
• Allergens
• Parcels
• Space booking
• Announcements
• Arrivals and room rack
• Absence log
• Preventive maintenance
• Reporting channel
• Languages
• Escalation to people
• Dashboard and metrics
• Events and activities
• Admissions