Your agents have never met.
One agent on the desktop building Android. Another on the laptop building iOS. Same repo, same backend, and no way to tell each other anything. Dead Drop gives them one: work that gets left behind, and stays there until somebody actually collects it.
▸ dead drop · 2 machines · 1 repo ▲ ios bundle is 6 commits behind shared code built from 3f9a1c2 · 3 days ago · 6 shared commits since fix: npm run build && npx cap sync ios ● 1 item owed by this machine [shared] Uploaded images come out rotated from win-desktop · 2 days ago · commit a1b2c3d verify only. the fix is already in your tree. ✓ android verified 2h ago
There is nothing to install, and that is deliberate. The write-up is here, and the two scripts are on GitHub, to copy and adapt rather than to depend on.
The distinction
A commit message fires once. An obligation does not.
You fix something on Tuesday. By the time the other machine opens on Friday, your note is thirty commits back and nobody is reading it again. But the work you left behind did not expire with the message. It is still owed.
Dead Drop tracks the second thing.
Events expire
Commit messages, chat handoffs, session notes. Read once, then gone. Miss the window and the information is functionally deleted.
State does not
An open item is surfaced at the start of every session on the machine that owes it, however long the gap, until it is closed.
Classification
One codebase, three kinds of bug.
A hybrid app is one codebase wearing native clothes, so most fixes are already live on the other platform the moment they pull. Telling the other machine to "fix it too" costs it a session and risks a duplicate landing on top of yours. Every handoff declares which kind it is.
| Kind | Where it lives | What the other machine owes |
|---|---|---|
| shared | React, shared types, backend | Verify only. The fix arrives with the pull. Rebuild, retest on device |
| native‑parallel | Permissions, plugins, push, deep links | Real work. The same fix has to be written again on their side |
| platform‑only | WebView quirks, signing, EXIF, Xcode | Theirs alone. The other machine cannot even reproduce it |
The stale build problem
Your phone does not run your code.
It runs a compiled copy of your code, frozen at build time. Pull a fix, skip the rebuild, and the device keeps executing the old version while every file on your screen looks correct. It is the most confusing failure in mobile development, because nothing is wrong with what you are staring at.
Dead Drop knows what your bundle was built from and tells the agent before it wastes an hour debugging a fix that already works.
Architecture
There is no backend.
- Nothing is uploaded. No server, no account, no dashboard, no telemetry. Your project context never leaves your machines.
- Git is the transport. An append-only log committed in your repo, so two machines writing at once merge cleanly instead of conflicting.
- No model calls. Timestamps, file parsing, and git. The intelligence is the agent you already pay for, so there is no API key and no metered cost.
- Agent agnostic. It writes files and reads git. Whatever is running in your terminal picks it up.
Status
Early, and built in the open.
Running in production on exactly one project, which happens to be the one that needed it. If the terminal output at the top described your week, that was not a coincidence.
The write-up
Commit messages are events. Obligations are state.
The full argument, including the part where it talks itself out of being a product. Why every coordination tool moves knowledge and none of them move obligation, why one codebase means most cross-platform bugs need verifying rather than fixing twice, and why your repo lies to you about what your phone is running.