Printing and distributing your kit

The kit is a PDF you print at home: one share card per circle member, plus an instruction sheet for each. The PDF is generated entirely on your device; nothing about it touches our servers.

What’s on a card

The share words (a SLIP-39 mnemonic), numbered, in four columns
The same words as a QR code, so nobody has to type twenty words by hand
A card ID (like AK7F3K-G2-M1) and a case number shared by the whole set
The recovery URL, the tool’s SHA-256 hash, and the signing-key fingerprint

What’s deliberately NOT on a card

No owner name. No holder name. No mention of who else holds cards, or how many exist. A card found on a sidewalk identifies nobody and, below your circle’s quorum, unlocks nothing, mathematically. This is why a lost card is a chore, not a catastrophe.

Printing safely

Use a home printer if you reasonably can. Office printers often keep job history; print shops are strangers with your key material. A cheap inkjet at home is the right tool.
Print on plain paper or cardstock. Laser toner outlasts inkjet ink if you have the choice, but either works; the health-check cycle will catch fading long before it matters.
Print one full set: each card once, each instruction sheet once.
Delete the PDF afterward (and empty the trash). The app makes regenerating a fresh kit trivial, so there’s no reason to keep the file around.
If your printer misfeeds and you reprint, destroy the misprint. A torn half-card is still a card.

The instruction sheet

Each holder gets a sheet with:

A plain-language “if you are reading this” opener
The condensed offline recovery procedure and where to get the tool (mirror list in priority order)
A sealed section: a fold-and-tape page containing the circle directory, listing who the other holders are and how to reach them

Ask each holder not to open the sealed section unless the recovery is real. It’s tape, not cryptography. The seal is a social signal, and an opened one tells you something useful at the next health check.

Handing out cards

In person is best. Post is acceptable for distant members (the card alone is useless, remember), but confirm arrival, and prefer tracked mail.
Suggest storage that survives moves and spring cleaning: a document safe, a file with important papers, a safe-deposit box for the professional group.
Photographing the card “as a backup” defeats the design: a photo in a cloud library is a share in whatever that library leaks to. Say this explicitly when you hand the card over; people do it with the best intentions.

Distributing the bundle copy

Alongside cards, the app offers USB copies of your encrypted continuity bundle for holders. The bundle is ciphertext (safe to hand out), and a local copy means recovery someday needs nothing from our servers. Give at least one or two holders a USB copy, and refresh it when the app nags you after major changes.

After distribution

Mark each card delivered in the app. From then on, quarterly health checks watch the kit for you: each holder confirms their card by scanning its QR or typing the card ID with the first and last word. You’ll see circle health at a glance, and you’ll know about problems years before anyone needs the cards.

When cards change hands or a re-share happens, old cards must be destroyed: cut through the words, not just the QR. The app tracks which case number is current; cards from a revoked set are rejected by the tool with a clear message, so a mixed drawer of old and new cards fails safe, not silent.