Show HN: LastShelf – an emergency map of your family's documents bills& contacts

Show HN: LastShelf – an emergency map of your family's documents bills& contacts(lastshelf.ai)

24 points by sbrown12 2 hours ago | 10 comments

After my father was diagnosed with Stage 3 kidney cancer, my family was thrown into a tailspin. Getting second opinions, planning surgery, ensuring insurance coverage, coping with the fear. It was a lot to process.

In the middle of dealing with all the medical logistics, I realized none of our family could answer if he: - Had a medical directive? - How to trigger his life insurance policy? - Where is his will and who is the executor? - What bank accounts and credit cards existed? - What bills are not on auto-pay? - When these bills due and how are they paid?

That wasn’t solved by password managers or budgeting apps. So I built it.

LastShelf: automatically discovers, documents and distributes a map of critical life documents, expenses & contacts in the event of an emergency. Register here: https://www.lastshelf.ai/

If you’ve lived through a similar crisis, I really want to hear what would have made the process easier.

Anyone who shares their feedback with me will get the first year free. Send a note to support [at] lastshelf.ai

ShinyLeftPad 2 hours ago |

Critical stuff like this is definitely a good idea to delegate to an LLM.

summermusic 1 hour ago | |

Yes, especially a subscription AI service that will exist forever and ever.

sequoia 1 hour ago |

a hundred dollars a year for this?? What does the service even do with that money? I pay this for 20 years so you can share a google doc upon my demise?

I must be missing something.

lwhsiao 2 hours ago |

One thing that I couldn't understand from the website: how is this triggered?

This sounds useful, but I also want an automated way to distribute the information when needed. Maybe a dead man's switch of sorts?

For example, suppose I'm a single adult, and I set this all up. Then I go for a hike and disappear forever. How can the trigger of distribution happen?

sbrown12 2 hours ago | |

In our earliest versions we experimented with a dead mans switch, but feedback was that folks would forget to reply to the monthly keep alive and we'd risk triggering too many false alarms. So we opted for picking trusted family members who you grant ongoing read only access. That way in an emergency, they already have the access they need to act.

We're 100% open to the idea of a dead man's switch, just want to find a way to avoid triggering too many false alarms. Any ideas on how to do that?

Calazon 2 hours ago | | |

Optional feature, off by default, customizable time interval, and a warning about false alarms?

Even with that you'd likely still trigger false alarms regularly, though they would be the responsibility of the user. Not sure whether it would be a worthwhile tradeoff overall.

graerg 1 hour ago | | |

I built if-i-go-missing.com along these lines. Weird, I’m also a Brown!

sublinear 1 hour ago | | |

Maybe an optional app? Send the keepalive email and alert the trusted family members when the app stops pinging back.

This would at least indicate that the phone is turned off or lost signal. All of this should be configurable by the user including thresholds before alert, reply timeout, etc.

I think expecting a ping from the app every 24h is a sensible default. Most people already "call to see if their phone is dead". This just automates it.

zmagdovitz 1 hour ago |

Love this - awesome release.