Almost Dawn

Almost Dawn is a mental health crisis check-in app. The idea is simple: when someone you care about is struggling, you shouldn't have to perform that on social media. The app creates a trust network — a small group of people who actually know you — and lets you check in honestly with them.

It uses a three-level severity system and end-to-end encrypted notes. The encryption is real — NaCl secretbox, device-only keys, the server never sees plaintext. Only the people in your network can read what you write.

Building this taught me more about product thinking than any job I've had. Every decision — the severity scale, the notification cadence, the escalation timers — had to be weighed against what it actually feels like to be in crisis. The technical problems (Supabase realtime, Deno edge functions, key exchange) were hard. But they were hard in service of something that genuinely needed to feel safe.