Afterlight: the ghost you leave in the machine, sealed on your own laptop

Description and use

Afterlight is a local digital estate planner that interviews users, creates an encrypted instruction letter, and splits the key into 5 SLIP‑39 cards, any 3 of which can unlock the letter using only open‑source tools.

Problem

When a person dies, their digital estate—accounts, subscriptions, passwords, photos—often becomes inaccessible to family, leading to confusion and loss.

Outcome

Afterlight creates a fully local, encrypted digital estate plan that can be recovered with standard tools, eliminating cloud dependence and ensuring long‑term accessibility.

Workflow

• 1. User runs Afterlight on a laptop with no internet access.
• 2. A local LLM (gemma3:4b via Ollama) asks a state‑machine‑driven interview about accounts, devices, wishes, etc.
• 3. Answers are validated by regex/entropy checks to block secrets before storage.
• 4. Facts are assembled into a plain‑letter; the user approves the content.
• 5. A 128‑bit random secret is generated, used as the age passphrase, and split into 3‑of‑5 SLIP‑39 shares printed as cards.
• 6. The letter is encrypted with age and stored locally.
• 7. To recover, family uses any three cards with a SLIP‑39 tool to reconstruct the passphrase and decrypt the letter with the stock age binary.

Evidence

Afterlight is a local-first digital estate planner. A language model running on your own laptop interviews you, one plain question at a time, and turns your answers into a letter of instruction for the people you love

Source

The letter says where things are (“password manager, emergency kit in the blue folder”), never what they are.

Source

The result opens with the stock age tool, so the family does not need Afterlight at all. I confirmed this: recovery opens with the stock age binary, no Afterlight code involved.

Source

Recovery needs no model at all, only open tools.

Source