A trigger is the rule that says "when this happens, release these items to these recipients." Inktally supports three kinds, and you can mix them per recipient or per item.
Manual
The simplest: you press the button. From the triggers page, you fire a release whenever you choose. We give you a short grace period (default 24 hours) to abort if you change your mind, then we email each recipient a claim link.
Use manual when you’re alive and well and just want to hand something off — like sharing the family insurance policy details with your sibling once the paperwork is done.
Scheduled
Set a specific date. On that date, the release fires automatically. Useful for birthday letters, retirement instructions, or anything tied to a known future moment.
You can change the date or abort up until the fire moment. We send you a reminder email 7 days before so a scheduled release is never a surprise to you.
Dead-man’s switch
Configure an interval (e.g., 30 days) and a miss threshold (e.g., 2 missed check-ins). If you don’t check in within interval × miss-threshold days, the release fires.
Checking in is a single tap from the Triggers page (or a mobile push notification, when the app ships). Each check-in resets the clock.
We err on the side of "ask once more". If a check-in window elapses, the release goes into a grace period before it actually fires — you get an email, an in-product banner, and a push notification, with a one-click way to check in late or abort the release entirely.
Scope: account, group, or document
A trigger can apply to your whole account (everything in your vault), a group (a folder you’ve created), or a single document or note. Most people start with per-document triggers and only set an account-level dead-man’s switch once they’ve been using Inktally for a while.
Decoy vault: manual only
If you’re using a decoy vault, only manual triggers are available inside the decoy. Scheduled and DMS triggers would let a coercer guess at the existence of the real vault by observing fire patterns, so we restrict the decoy to on-demand-only.