Heartbeat Check + After-Death Messages — Not Timed, but Heartbeat-Triggered

Timed delivery has a fundamental flaw: what if you're still alive when the timer fires? You set a last letter to go out to your family in a month, but you don't die — the message sends anyway and your whole family gets a scare. Plain timing doesn't fit the last-letter use case. Heartbeat check flips the logic: you check in on a schedule, and the system records that you're still around. The day you stop checking in, a sequence of actions begins. Further reading: Solo Living Safety — So Someone Knows When Something's Wrong.

Timed Delivery vs. Heartbeat Trigger

Timed: fires at the scheduled moment whether you're alive or not. Good for birthday wishes and anniversary reminders — situations where your presence is guaranteed. Heartbeat trigger: acts only once it detects you've gone silent. Good for last letters, password release, and after-death notifications — you don't know when something will happen, but if it does, the message goes out.

What 'Dead Yet' Does vs. What We Do

'Dead Yet' is a well-known pre-death check-in app — it notifies your contacts if you go silent. It does one thing: notify. TimeWill does four: notify contacts, release passwords, deliver last letters, and activate a memorial page. Notification is only the start — the passwords, private keys, and letters that follow are what your family actually needs.

The Four-Stage Flow After a Trigger

• T1 Phone Alert — First timeout — the app pushes a reminder to you. You may have just forgotten.
• T2 Notify Contacts — Second timeout — your designated contacts get a text or email: 'Please confirm XXX's status.'
• T3 Release Digital Assets — Third timeout — the password vault unlocks and account credentials are sent to the designated recipients.
• T4 Deliver Last Letters — Final confirmation — your written letters are sent out. This is the last step.

You set the gap between each stage yourself — a day, three days, a week, a month. It's flexible, so a business trip and a missed check-in won't trigger a false alarm.

Does the Heartbeat Check Drain the Battery?

No. The heartbeat check runs as local client-side logic — the app records your check-in time and periodically checks whether you've timed out. There's no background GPS, no constant network request, no heavy computation. It's as power-efficient as any ordinary app.

If a Check-in Fails (Network Outage or a Broken Phone), Will It False-Alarm?

No. The four-stage design exists precisely to prevent false alarms: T1 is a local app reminder, and contacts aren't messaged until T2. Each stage has its own independent interval. A broken phone just means you can't check in — the missed T1 kicks off the T2 countdown, leaving you ample time to log in from any device and cancel before T2 fires.

How Is This Different from Apple's Health Sharing?

Apple Health Sharing can only share activity and heart-rate data with family — it can't send automatic notifications, can't trigger password release, and can't deliver last letters. TimeWill handles after-death automation; Apple handles health data sharing. They're fundamentally different things.