Heirloom

Inspiration

Every year, families lose thousands of dollars and months of time trying to piece together a loved one's digital life after they pass. Bank accounts nobody knew existed. Subscriptions still charging a dead person's card. Passwords locked away forever. We built Heirloom because nobody should have to deal with that chaos during the worst moment of their life.

What it does

Heirloom is a digital estate organizer with two sides. The vault owner logs in and organizes their entire digital life into four sections — bank accounts, active subscriptions with cancellation instructions, important documents, and personal letters to loved ones. When the owner passes, a designated beneficiary submits an unlock request. Once approved, they see everything organized and waiting for them — a final gift from someone who thought ahead.

How we built it

We built Heirloom using Next.js 14 with the App Router, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS for the frontend. Supabase handles authentication, the database, and file storage with row-level security ensuring beneficiaries cannot access vault data until explicitly unlocked. shadcn/ui gave us clean, accessible components quickly. The whole thing was built and deployed on Vercel in under 8 hours using the low/no-code track philosophy — letting the tools do the heavy lifting so we could focus on the experience.

Challenges we ran into

The hardest problem was the two-sided access model. The same vault needs to be completely invisible to a beneficiary until unlocked, then fully readable — but never editable. Getting Supabase row-level security policies right so this was enforced at the database level (not just the frontend) took real debugging. We also had to rethink the scope mid-hackathon and strip the product down to its emotional core, which was actually the right call.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The beneficiary vault view. When you log in as a beneficiary and see everything your loved one left organized for you — the accounts, the subscriptions to cancel, the letters — it feels like opening something precious. We're proud that a technically simple app can carry that much emotional weight. We're also proud of shipping a complete, working two-sided product in one day.

What we learned

Scope is everything at a hackathon. We started with AI document parsing, encryption, and email notifications — and cut all of it. The version we shipped is more focused and more human because of those cuts. We also learned that Supabase RLS is powerful but unforgiving — get your security policies right before you write a single line of frontend code.

What's next for Heirloom

Real identity verification for unlock requests instead of manual admin approval. Email notifications via Resend when a vault is unlocked. A mobile app so owners can update their vault from anywhere. And an AI document assistant that reads uploaded PDFs and extracts key details automatically — turning a 20-page insurance policy into a 3-sentence summary anyone can understand.

Built With

• aes256
• figma
• supabase
• webstudio