We all have digital secrets that matter: password manager recovery codes, cryptocurrency seeds, important documents, instructions for loved ones. What happens to these if you're suddenly unavailable?

Traditional approaches fail:

• Give one person everything → Single point of failure and trust
• Split files manually → Confusing, error-prone, no encryption
• Use a password manager's emergency access → Relies on company existing
• Write it in a will → Becomes public record, slow legal process

ReMemory takes a different approach:

• No single point of failure — requires multiple people to cooperate
• No trust in any one person — even your most trusted friend can't access secrets alone
• Offline and self-contained — recovery works without internet or servers*
• Designed for non-technical people — clear instructions, not cryptographic puzzles

Two things drove me to create ReMemory.

First, I watched a documentary about Clive Wearing, a man who has lived with a 7-second memory since 1985. Seeing how fragile memory can be made me think about what would happen to my digital life if something similar happened to me.

Second, I've had several concussions from cycling accidents. Each time, I've been lucky to recover fully. But each time, I've been reminded that our brains are more fragile than we like to think.

ReMemory is my answer: a way to ensure the people I trust can access what matters, even if I can't help them.

ReMemory assumes:

• Your friends will only cooperate when needed
• At least threshold friends will keep their bundle safe
• Your device is trusted when you create bundles
• The browser used for recovery is not compromised

ReMemory does NOT rely on:

• Any server or cloud service
• Any ReMemory website or infrastructure
• Any long-term availability of this project
• The internet during recovery

See the Security Review for details.

A single piece reveals nothing about your secret. This is a mathematical guarantee of Shamir's Secret Sharing — any fewer than threshold pieces contain zero information about the original secret.

You can set a waiting period when creating bundles. Even with enough pieces, the files stay locked until the date you chose — for example, 30 days, 6 months, or a specific date.

This uses the League of Entropy (drand), a distributed randomness beacon run by organizations around the world. At recovery time, a brief internet connection is needed — not to send data, but to verify that enough time has passed.

CLI: rememory seal --timelock 30d (or 6m, 1y, 2027-06-15T00:00:00Z) Web: Enable under "Advanced options" in the bundle creator.

Important caveats:

• Recovery requires internet access (to check the drand beacon)
• If the League of Entropy stops operating before your time lock expires, recovery won't work
• Without the time lock, recovery works fully offline — the time lock adds this one dependency

# Using Nix (recommended)
nix develop

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build
make build

# Run tests
make test         # Unit tests
make test-e2e     # Browser tests (requires: npm install)

# Preview website locally
make serve        # Serves at http://localhost:8000

ReMemory isn't the first tool to use Shamir's Secret Sharing. Its focus is making recovery possible for non-technical people, without installing anything.

Shamir's Secret Sharing tools

Other approaches

Key takeaways:

• Most tools only handle text or passphrases — eljojo/rememory, both horcrux projects, henrysdev/Haystack, cyphar/paperback, MinorGlitch/ethernity, and msolomon/keybearer are the few that handle actual files.
• Only eljojo/rememory generates a self-contained recovery tool (recover.html) bundled with each piece — no installation, no internet, no CLI needed.
• Only eljojo/rememory includes contact details in each bundle so friends know how to reach each other during recovery.
• paritytech/banana_split and cyphar/paperback output QR codes for printing, which is great for paper-based backups of short secrets.
• Bitwarden Emergency Access is fundamentally different — it delegates vault access to one trusted person (not M-of-N splitting) and requires an online service.
• Apple Digital Legacy only activates after death (requires proof of death documents) — it does not cover incapacity, memory loss, or other scenarios. Limited to Apple ecosystem (iCloud data, not Keychain passwords). Access expires after 3 years.
• potatoqualitee/eol-dr is not a tool but a valuable end-of-life planning checklist covering accounts, finances, subscriptions, and devices — complementary to any tool here.
• ssss is the classic Unix implementation but is limited to 128 ASCII characters and requires a terminal.
• GitHub offers a successor feature for maintaining ownership continuity of repositories — useful for ensuring your code projects remain accessible.