Solo Developer Releases Free Dead Man's Switch for Business Succession

The project stems from his own experience. He wrote that he was hospitalised in 2012 and lost his business at that time, and that he could not get data to his technical second-in-command quickly enough without causing frustration for clients. Death Plan Switch is presented as a way to address that gap in a succession plan.

According to the post, the software is free to download, use or study under the MIT license. Mr Bishop said he has been using it for the last few weeks, that it was authored with the help of Claude Code after he wrote an extensive Markdown document, and that it passed 42 unit tests.

He also said clients describe the tool as a strong sales feature when they trust him with their hosting and technology accounts. The Hacker News post listed 3 points and no comments at the time of writing. The claims about the software's testing and use come from the author's post, and no independent evaluation was included in the material provided.

Editor's Summary

Peter Bishop has released Death Plan Switch, a free MIT-licensed self-hosted dead man's switch for solo developers and business owners. The tool is designed to notify designated contacts and help a business keep operating if its owner dies or goes missing, based on Mr Bishop's account of losing his own business after a 2012 hospitalisation. The release has been described only in a Hacker News Show HN post, with no independent testing or third-party assessment provided.