SENTINEL·IEP Documentation

Everything you need to install, configure, and use SENTINEL·IEP — from your first meeting to advanced features for advocates.

SENTINEL·IEP is a desktop application for parents and advocates in IEP meetings. It runs on your computer, helps you record and analyze meetings in real time, generate letters, and reference a curated library of disability and procedural knowledge — sourced from CPIR, OSEP, the IRIS Center, and other authoritative public material with citations.

Start here

1 Install SENTINEL·IEP — download and set up the app on Windows, macOS, or Linux. About 10 minutes for a basic install.

2 Walk through your first launch — acknowledge the disclaimer, run the hardware diagnostic (Help · Test my setup), enter your license key, and load your first document.

3 Try live monitoring — use SENTINEL·IEP during a real IEP meeting to flag statements in real time and capture an annotated transcript.

4 Run a Case Analysis — load all your case documents and get a multi-AI synthesized analysis of your child's situation.

What's new

Recent additions, covered in their own pages:

Letters generator — produce Prior Written Notice requests, evaluation requests, FBA requests, state complaints, and other letters as editable Word documents.
Knowledge Library — 37+ curated, cited entries on disability categories, accommodations, interventions, and procedural rights. All sourced from federal and peer-reviewed material.
Community Reports — anonymized accounts from other subscribers about how districts have behaved. Two-model defamation moderation, region + district-size level only.
AI Help Bot — type a question, get answers grounded in the help articles, with a fallback to submit a technical question to support.
Reference dialog — a four-tab browser for Accommodations, IDEA Categories, Knowledge Library, and Community Reports.

Common questions

Does my data leave my computer?

Documents and recordings stay on your computer by default. The AI features (live analyzer, document review, help bot) send the relevant text to a cloud AI provider when you trigger them. The live analyzer only sends the typed notes you compose, not the audio recording itself. See the privacy policy for the full breakdown.

Do I need a GPU?

Not for the cloud-AI path. SENTINEL·IEP can run entirely on cloud AI (the default for subscribers), which works on any modern laptop. A GPU is only needed if you want to run local Whisper transcription or local LLMs.

Is this legal advice?

No. SENTINEL·IEP is informational only. It cites federal regulations and authoritative public sources, but it is not a substitute for an attorney. See the full disclaimer.

What if a feature breaks?

The fastest path is the in-app Help button (top right of every screen). It includes an AI help bot grounded in these docs, plus a form to submit a technical question that lands in our support queue with your app version and recent logs pre-filled. See AI Help Bot.

Contact

Email hello@sentineliep.com if you're stuck. We answer our own email.