Show HN: Death Plan Switch, a self-hosted dead man's switch for solo devs

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

70 points by romeo19361 5 hours ago | 49 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.

Shank 4 hours ago |

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 4 hours ago | |

Agreed.

romeo19361 4 hours ago | | |

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

nirui 2 hours ago |

> 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 1 hour ago | |

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 ;)

mrheosuper 4 hours ago |

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 1 hour ago | |

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.

stevekemp 2 hours ago |

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 2 hours ago | |

I'll check that out, thanks. I recall turning them off so will look into it :))

jen729w 3 hours ago |

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 3 hours ago | |

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 2 hours ago | | |

> 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.

squinx 21 minutes ago |

Cool conecpt

N_Lens 4 hours ago |

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

romeo19361 4 hours ago | |

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 4 hours ago | |

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 :))

mortmeter 3 hours ago |

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 3 hours ago | |

Built in, you can pause it on your holiday for up to 28 days

y42 3 hours ago |

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?

romeo19361 3 hours ago | |

The system checks with contacts after one year to reconfirm. If I don't receive my weekly check-in email I check the server. This is a best effort attempt to ensure business continuity for me if I'm dead. It's better than not having a plan for me. There's a health address you can point to that checks the system is working from an outside monitor. :)

bmoathn 4 hours ago |

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

romeo19361 3 hours ago | |

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.

iugtmkbdfil834 4 hours ago |

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

romeo19361 4 hours ago | |

Would love the feedback and test, thankyou.

mococa 4 hours ago |

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

AndrewKemendo 4 hours ago |

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 4 hours ago | |

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 3 hours ago |

> 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 3 hours ago | |

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.

bayarearefugee 3 hours ago | |

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.

dofm 3 hours ago | | |

Over the years as a freelancer I have had clients who would be more devastated by my death than my own family, and it’s not like my family doesn’t love me.

When you are a small business you often have small business clients, and it is fully possible for projects to be at a fairly delicate stage where it’s crucial for their business, they have part-paid, and the time and money in finding a replacement for your input would put them at some risk.

I once had to try to help a company whose web developer had died of a heart attack just before rolling out a really major bit of code that had been months in the making. I couldn’t help much (couldn’t get access to things) but the company could not afford to redo the work.

The people who urged me to try to help them were their most direct competitor! The world of some small businesses is that precarious and interconnected that their competitors were trying help them stay in business.

romeo19361 3 hours ago | | |

I like my clients :)) that's all I can say. Thanks for the comments.

aabhay 4 hours ago |

> I’ve been testing it for one week

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

yieldcrv 3 hours ago |

> 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”

romeo19361 3 hours ago | |

Fair enough. The readme contains the rehearsal script so you can make sure it's working for you. We don't host this service so you are ensuring the product works for you via rehearsal and usage.

effortprogramme 3 hours ago |

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.

romeo19361 2 hours ago | |

Point noted, thanks.

matt3210 4 hours ago |

> Happy to answer any questions

Are you OK bro?

romeo19361 4 hours ago | |

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

vasco 4 hours ago |

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

jubilee33 3 hours ago | |

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 3 hours ago | | |

altmanaltman 3 hours ago | | |

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 4 hours ago | |

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:))

egamirorrim 3 hours ago |

People still write things in PHP?

dofm 3 hours ago | |

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.

romeo19361 3 hours ago | | |

romeo19361 3 hours ago | |

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.