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Show HN: Death Plan Switch, a self-hosted dead man's switch for solo devs (deathplanswitch.com)

2 points by romeo19361 ↗ HN
Hi HN,

I'm Peter Bishop and I've been working in graphics and web tech for over 25yrs.

I've recently launched Death Plan Switch to solve a major problem in my succession plan. What if I go missing or die? The right people are told and my business can continue to operate for my clients.

There's a backstory to this project, I was hospitalised in 2012 and lost my business back then and I couldn't get the data to my technical 2IC in time without frustrating my clients.

Death Plan Switch solves this problem, it's free to download and use or study under the MIT license.

I've been using it for the last few weeks. It was authored with the help of Claude Code after writing an extensive MD document and it passed 42 unit tests.

I hope you get some use out of it, or it inspires your own succession plans. My clients are telling me this is a strong sales feature when they trust me with their hosting and technology accounts.

Happy to answer any questions.

Kind regards, Peter Bishop.

64 comments

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N_Lens
Nice, although it seems likely that I would overlook replying to the email and everyone will panic when they get notified.
AndrewKemendo
I would make it monthly or quarterly not weekly

By the way Google has had this for a while and I signed up for it back in 2018 or so.

they check in it feels like quarterly at most

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en

romeo19361
For version 1 we decided for the check-in to be weekly because it can still take 13 days for the Switch to tell the lawyer and/or the 2IC where our master keys are held. Thanks for the link, this isn't locked to google accounts, it's more so for the 2IC to ensure business continuity with servers domains Dropbox etc.
iugtmkbdfil834
Love it. Will test. Initial feedback: consider configurable timetable threshold ( not everyone will want the same ).
romeo19361
Would love the feedback and test, thankyou.
matt3210
> Happy to answer any questions

Are you OK bro?

aabhay
> I’ve been testing it for one week

So, you haven’t had enough time to even encounter most edge cases :)

Shank
This is an area of planning known as "business continuity planning" and as part of this process, you should have a document and written procedures that are executed by humans, not computers, and tested as part of this. For example, your BCP should include people who are already trusted and know how your infrastructure works, and you should do a dress rehearsal on a yearly basis at least. A notification tool is one thing, but realistically this should be just one of your tools.
vasco
Why do people share projects that can be made in 10 prompts?
romeo19361
I shared it because my business had the need and to inspire others to think about succession. It's dead simple to build with or without AI for a seasoned coder:))
jubilee33
I'm always too embarrassed to show the things I make on here. Some voice keeps telling me "they aren't really outstanding or novel qnd nobody will care"

But seeing the front page the past few months, maybe i should. Or not, I honestly don't know how to feel. İ like people sharing and having the courage to put their work out, but if this place gets cluttered with "i installed Linux on my AI laptop" Where then to go to find any interesting info. There is arvix? No frivolous things there right? :p

I liked the project by the way, even if it's a bit trivial.

altmanaltman
most posts do not show up in the front page at all, the ones you're seeing are the ones that are actually good (in an ideal world, in reality a lot of this is controlled anyway). But yeah even if you make the best thing you've ever dreamed of, do not think posting it on HN = automatic front page. Most content never makes it and gets like 1-2 upvotes. I've hit #1 only once even though i post regularly. Just as long as you're not spamming or breaking any general rules it's alright to take a chance with anything you deem interesting or worth tinkering with.
jubilee33
No u misunderstood. The post I was referring to was on the front page. And I know why, despite being literally about what I said. It wouldn't be productive to get into that conversation as it's not relevant to what I'm interested in, which is advancing tech; hopefully to a point where getting the meatbags to collaborate on it is past relevant.
mrheosuper
Nice, i have similar idea for a while, with some additional features:

- Easy to use, my idea is just have a telegram/facebook chatbot, people talk to it in plain English, what is their message, the receiver and the watch time.

- Multi reminder: For example, you can set 3 days to send message 1, 10 days to send message 2 and so on. The idea is the message 1 can be "You are receiving this message because XXX has something to talk, please contact them if you can ASAP". So that if you forgot to "kick the dog" 1 day, your deep personal message won't be sent immediately.

romeo19361
I'm glad this has inspired your ideas :)) the project is free to fork, run it through your AI or it's there to inspire your own switch.
bmoathn
interesting concept. feels high gain at 1/wk. like, can it subscribe to my garmin connect or something?
mococa
You’d use temporal workflows, this operation should never fail
egamirorrim
People still write things in PHP?
dofm
All those various regular code popularity surveys place it above Rust and Go.

It’s still the most easily-deployable language to build web apps in, and there’s nothing particularly missing from it now.

Also AI writes it really well (is good at using the latest features etc.), it has a remarkably un-fucked-up package manager, Laravel is fairly easy to work with, etc.

altmanaltman
> What if I go missing or die? The right people are told and my business can continue to operate for *my clients*... I was hospitalised in 2012 and lost my business back then and I couldn't get the data to my technical 2IC in time without frustrating *my clients*... *My clients* are telling me this is a strong sales feature when they trust me with their hosting and technology accounts.

I am not sure why this focus on clients in a context like this feels unsettling to me, but it does.

romeo19361
I'm building a business for the long term and those clients are investing money into me. My next of kin is notified first. It just seems sensible to give my clients long term security if I have another health issue or die.
jen729w
Hi Peter. This is advice I give to every AI product now, not just yours. Nothing personal.

It's fine to use AI to create the product – but please, for the love of god, write your own copy. When someone can't be bothered writing their own landing page, I assume they're just not that bothered about the product.

romeo19361
Fair call on the copy, I may tweak it. The product came from a brief I spent two days on, so the thinking is mine even where home page's words aren't entirely. This is a free product. I'm happy to have my Switch in place because my clients are loving the plans.
jen729w
> the thinking is mine even where home page's words aren't entirely

I know that, because I saw your HN post.

A drive-by visitor doesn't. They see the AI copy, think 'slop', and keep going.

y42
From my experience, there is no everlasting digital system, no matter how many fallbacks you add. So I wonder, how can you ensure, this still works after e. g. 1 year?
yieldcrv
> and it passed 42 unit tests

wowww 42 unit tests that Claude made up

I was into it until you considered this a level of assurance

feels like you’ve been out of the software industry for a decade or two

but maybe you know your clientele and they would find this validating. I’ve entered into a couple industries over time where complete non sequiturs are what sold products. “So-and-so has this random unrelated credential, and thats why he will be the trusted partner for this commodities shipment he has no experience in”

effortprogramme
Nice Work! I know you have a deep expertise in your domain, but I think you may wanna de-slop the website since it pretty looks like ai-generated.
mortmeter
Fun base rate: at 45 your odds of dying in a given week are about 1 in 16,000. So basically every missed check-in is going to be a holiday or a full inbox.
romeo19361
Built in, you can pause it on your holiday for up to 28 days
stevekemp
I notice that your github README says that you don't accept pull-requests, that's fine, but you've still got them enabled upon the project. Perhaps you should go to your repository settings, and disable them?
romeo19361
I'll check that out, thanks. I recall turning them off so will look into it :))
nirui
> independent web developers

Hmmm... the market is kinda narrow.

But more importantly, say I self-hosted this service, then, I have to answering emails for the rest of my life telling a program I'm still alive. It's kinda high maintenance all on it's own.

That is assuming this service continuous to run without upkeep, at very least keeping it powered, and connected to the Internet. I'm not really sure what comes first, the end of my life or I got bored of doing it.

I know it sounded inapplicable for a lot of people especially who do remote works, but still if you're thinking about letting a machine run your death plan, maybe it's also the time to start make people connections, such as with lawyers, partners etc, people you can trust and have the capability of handling issues.

Also, if you do remote work, maybe setup an account inheritance plan if the platform supports it, assuming the account is dedicated for working for the effected team of course.

Also also, just an idea, what if you make the check passive? Instead of having to answer emails, some automated procedure will send keepalives to tell the program to not trigger? That will massively lower the cost of using it.

romeo19361
The Switch works by pressing a button on a page. The Switch emails the link, so pressing the button confirms everything is okay! An automatic keep alive would keep pinging if you're dead. I agree it's a narrow market. I've put my 2IC in place and I'm meeting with my lawyer soon to add her. This is about having external relationships for sure and I very much appreciate that comment. The cost to me is a small Linode (nanode) and it hooks into SMTP2go which I already pay for ;)
nirui
> An automatic keep alive would keep pinging if you're dead

Look it this way: an automated request, a email click, it's all just signal collection. If something keeps making an automatic requests beyond it's intended need, then it's just bad signal collection.

I'm pretty sure there are better ways, especially the intended sample rate is 1/week which fairly high fault-tolerant for the use case. For example, you can send keepalives only when user's device is unlocked and in use, etc.

But of course that require client-side development, not sure if you're willing to get your hand dirty on that.

romeo19361
Not at this stage. Part of my campaign is to inspire others to create a solution. It came up in my business and this is how I'm dealing with it. I've always been web based. There's actually an app you can download for your phone at deadmanswitch.com If people create their own switches in different flavours I consider this thread to be successful.
justauserid
Configurable gaps would be great and also multiple instances (somehow in sync? maybe?). In case someone chose a longer gap and then one instance went down. I personally wouldn't want anything below multiple weeks (at least; 2-3 months would be ideal for me).

This will be a good e2ee'd hosted service though (at least for someone like me). The problem is how to de-e2ee when the person is gone. Might be workable if the dependent receipient might also be well versed with encryption and had an open public key or so. Yeah, this is tricky.

But either way, it's kinda weird to setup something that will be sued after they are dead and that something is supposed to be maintained and kept up by them.

calyhre
Longer duration comes with the risks of payment going down where you hosted it. You disappear, bills are not paid, your dead man switch is now down too
romeo19361
Personally I'm handling this by paying my monthly hosting bill two months in advance. That gives my 2IC plenty of time to move the sites or provide access to my clients' new provider. Also the 2IC can pay the hosting bill. The reason the switch checks weekly is also to stay in sync with monthly bills paid. Nice insights and thoughtful comments. Thanks, calyhre.
romeo19361
Another option for anyone reading this thread is to put the switch on a different host to your main VPS or servers. Cheap hosting paid yearly in advance is one idea under a different billing account or another provider. My switch is hosted in Singapore but the majority of my sites are Australian. So if the Aus servers go down upstream it's less likely the switch will be affected. :)
romeo19361
I decided not to monetize or host it for sale that way because I didn't want to deal with the warranty side of things through an insurance provider. The app is free to take and use or do with as you wish. Thinking of adding a longer timeframe to a new version as others have asked too.
[dead] sagyn
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asafel
Solo dev here, with a mobile app that has paying subscribers. The part that worries me most is not the server but the app store accounts. Apple and Google developer accounts are tied to me personally, so even if the right people get the message, I'm not sure they could take over. Did anyone here solve the store account side?
romeo19361
Add your 2IC as an Admin on Apple (you need a organisation account) and with Google Play console invite them. You can keep a master document, put the 2FA recovery steps in it, and keep that master password separate from the document. Happy to work through any issues with you mate. :))
silisav
Solving the bus factor!

While it seems like a dark topic to address, I find it very useful, thanks for sharing.

romeo19361
You're welcome. I'm pitching to an organisation with a heap of members next year. The bus factor was what came up when I ran some scenarios through my AI as to why they might not shop with an independent. :)) Spot on.