Digital Death Plan

Digital Death Plan Skill

Your life is mostly online now, and none of it is in your will. When someone dies, their family routinely loses irreplaceable photos, can't close accounts that keep billing, gets locked out of email (which is the master key to everything), and spends months fighting platform bureaucracy — all avoidable with an afternoon of planning while alive. This skill builds that plan: inventory the digital assets that matter, set up the legitimate access routes (the built-in legacy features, not password-sharing that violates terms and breaks on death), and write your trusted person clear instructions so grief isn't compounded by a login wall.

What This Skill Produces

• A digital asset inventory: accounts and content sorted by what should happen to each — memorialize, transfer, download-then-close, or delete — with the sentimental and the financial both covered
• An access plan using legitimate mechanisms: platform legacy/inactive-account tools (the ones that actually survive death), where credentials live (a password manager's emergency access, not a sticky note), and what your executor is legally entitled to
• Instructions for your person: a plain letter telling your trusted someone what exists, where the keys are, and what you want done — findable, not buried
• A "what to protect" note: the accounts that keep charging, the ones with real money, the irreplaceable photos, and the ones you'd want closed for privacy

Required Inputs

Ask for (if not already provided):

• The digital footprint: email(s), photo/cloud storage, social media, financial and crypto, subscriptions, domains/websites, gaming, anything with money or memories
• Who the trusted person / executor is, and how tech-comfortable they are
• What the user wants for the sensitive stuff — memorialize socials or delete? who gets the photos? anything to be closed privately without others seeing?
• Whether there's a will/executor already, so this plugs into it rather than floating

Framework

1. Email is the master key — start there. Whoever controls the primary email can reset almost everything else, so it's the highest-priority and highest-risk asset. Plan its access first (legacy contact / emergency access), and note that this power is exactly why it must go to the right person.
2. Sort assets by desired outcome, not by app. For each account: memorialize (socials with a legacy-contact feature), transfer (photos, domains, money), download-then-close (subscriptions, most services), or delete (privacy). The outcome dictates the mechanism.
3. Use the legitimate rails, not password-sharing. The durable routes are the built-in ones — major platforms have legacy-contact / inactive-account / memorial processes, and a good password manager has emergency-access delegation. Sharing raw passwords often violates terms, breaks when passwords rotate, and can create legal ambiguity. The plan uses what's designed to survive death, and flags that an executor's legal access rights vary by place (verify-local).
4. Protect the money and the memories specifically. Two failure modes dominate: accounts that quietly keep billing a dead person, and irreplaceable photos lost behind a login. Flag both explicitly — what has real value, what recurs, what can never be recovered — so they get handled first. Crypto especially: no seed phrase, no recovery, ever.
5. Write the human instructions, and make them findable. A plan nobody can locate is no plan. The letter to your person: what exists, where the keys are (the password manager, the emergency-access setup, the safe), what you want done with each category, and where THIS document lives — stored with your will or told to the executor, never left only on the device that's now locked.

Output Format

## Digital asset inventory
| Account/asset | Has money? | Irreplaceable? | Desired outcome | Access mechanism |

## Access plan (legitimate rails)
Email (master key): [legacy/emergency access setup] · Password manager emergency
access: … · Platform legacy tools to set up now: … · Executor's legal access:
[verify-local]

## Protect first
[Recurring charges to stop · real money (incl. crypto — seed phrase!) · the photos]

## Letter to your person (draft)
[What exists · where the keys are · what to do with each category · where this plan lives]

## Set up this week
[The 3-4 legacy/emergency-access features to actually switch on now]

Quality Checks

• Email is prioritized as the master key
• Every asset has a desired outcome and a legitimate access mechanism — not "share the password"
• Money (recurring charges, accounts, crypto seed phrases) and irreplaceable photos are called out for first handling
• The instructions to the trusted person are drafted and their storage location is specified (not on the locked device)
• Executor legal-access and platform specifics are flagged verify-local, and it's noted this pairs with — doesn't replace — a will

Anti-Patterns

• Do not recommend a shared plaintext password list — it breaks on rotation, often violates terms, and creates legal mess; use legacy tools and emergency access
• Do not give legal advice on wills, executors, or estate law — flag verify-local and route to a will/solicitor; this is the digital companion to that, not a substitute
• Do not skip crypto's brutal finality — no key means the money is simply gone
• Do not create a plan that lives only on the user's device — findability is the whole point
• Do not assume the "trusted person" should get everything — some accounts the user may want closed privately; honor per-category wishes

Related

[[legacy-letter]] for the emotional message that rides alongside; [[grief-admin]] is what your people will be doing — this makes it survivable; [[estate-planning-kit]] for the will this plugs into; [[password]] hygiene now makes all of this easier.