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▲ Show HN: Death Plan Switch, a self-hosted dead man's switch for solo devs(deathplanswitch.com)
45 points by romeo19361 2 hours ago | 28 comments

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.

▲y42 a few seconds ago | parent | next [-]

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?

▲Shank 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

▲romeo19361 34 minutes ago | parent [-]

Agreed.

▲romeo19361 31 minutes ago | parent [-]

The readme goes through rehearsals and contacts reconfirm yearly, and I confirm each still has what they need. Thanks, mate.

▲mrheosuper 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

▲jen729w 6 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

▲N_Lens an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nice, although it seems likely that I would overlook replying to the email and everyone will panic when they get notified.

▲romeo19361 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Also, if you miss the first email two more reminders are sent to you before emailing your next of kin. It's only when your next of kin says there's a problem, or doesn't answer, your lawyer and/or 2IC are informed. It's a great point you've raised.

▲romeo19361 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It's designed to send one email to check on you per week. Currently for me this is 9am Monday. I can't miss it because I'm selling my clients the death plan in my contracts. You can change the timing of the email to suit your needs. Thanks for the great feedback :))

▲iugtmkbdfil834 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Love it. Will test. Initial feedback: consider configurable timetable threshold ( not everyone will want the same ).

▲romeo19361 30 minutes ago | parent [-]

Would love the feedback and test, thankyou.

▲mococa 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You’d use temporal workflows, this operation should never fail

▲bmoathn 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

interesting concept. feels high gain at 1/wk. like, can it subscribe to my garmin connect or something?

▲romeo19361 26 minutes ago | parent [-]

It's only one button to press each week. I don't have a Garmin, that would be interesting to connect it in that way for your use case.

▲AndrewKemendo an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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 an hour ago | parent [-]

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.

▲altmanaltman 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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.

▲bayarearefugee 7 minutes ago | parent [-]

I can see some decent reasons for a dead man's switch, like notifying people in the situation where you live alone and have pets (though you'd want it to be much shorter than a week) or to send a goodbye or legal documents to a loved one, but I'll be honest, I don't feel the least bit of obligation to anyone who is just a business contact after I'm dead. They can figure it out, or not. Not my fuckin' problem anymore.

▲aabhay an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I’ve been testing it for one week

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

▲egamirorrim 26 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People still write things in PHP?

▲romeo19361 22 minutes ago | parent [-]

PHP by Larry Ullman happened to be the first programming book I read in 2002. I love PHP and I can understand what Claude is doing with it.

▲matt3210 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Happy to answer any questions

Are you OK bro?

▲romeo19361 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

Yes — healthy and fine. I checked in with my Switch yesterday:))

▲vasco 43 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Why do people share projects that can be made in 10 prompts?

▲jubilee33 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

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.

▲romeo19361 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

<3

▲altmanaltman 14 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

▲romeo19361 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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:))