Daily check-in
Beacon checks in with you once a day at the time you chose during setup. If you miss two check-ins in a row, your message is delivered to your recipient about 36 hours from the first miss. Rapid Response mode shortens that window to about 12 hours total. The check-in arrives via the contact method you selected — email, SMS, or both — and asks for a single tap or click to confirm "Here I am." If you miss the first daily check-in, a second one is sent 24 hours later. If that one is missed too, your message is delivered 12 hours after the second. In Rapid Response mode, the first check-in arrives at the time you chose, the second is sent 6 hours later, and the message is delivered 6 hours after that. Rapid Response requires a phone number on file because SMS is the only channel fast enough for that rhythm. Both modes can be paused, edited, or deactivated from the dashboard at any time.
Delivery: how your recipient receives the message
Your recipient receives a notification by email, SMS, or both with a link to a viewer page on milkweed.foundation. They confirm a one-time code we sent to the same channel — that step verifies they are the person you trusted with that contact method — and the message opens in their browser. The link stays valid for 7 days. The contact method we use for delivery matches what you set for the recipient at setup. By default the recipient is kept out of the system until delivery — no account, no app, nothing to maintain. If you'd prefer they know they're named, the recipient form has a "Let them know they're listed" option: when that's on, we send a brief one-time note at setup so they know to expect a message from milkweed.foundation if you ever stop checking in. Either way, they're never asked to sign up, agree to anything, or share an account with you. Once the message is delivered, they can come back and read it as many times as they want for 7 days. After 7 days the link is no longer valid.
Encryption posture (cross-link)
Beacon messages are encrypted in transit with TLS 1.3 and at rest in Cloudflare R2. We publish a warrant canary, re-signed on a schedule, and a written subpoena protocol so that any government request that compels us to reveal data leaves a trail. The full trust posture, including what we can and cannot see, lives on the Security page. These claims are load-bearing for institutional partners and we keep them in one canonical place rather than restating them across the marketing surface. For the binding text, follow the Security link below.
