Social impact · iOS · iPad · Apple Watch

A safe place that fits in a pocket — or on a wrist.

Haven turns the phone or watch someone already carries into a private safety toolkit and a way up — a secure place for your documents, a connection that holds when there's no signal, the resources nearby, and a path that keeps going long after the crisis passes. Built from first principles for the people app stores forget.

Production-readyFree · grant-fundedOffline-first · zero-knowledge

The Two Tin Cups doctrine

Before phones, a grandmother could stretch a string between two tin cans and her grandkid could whisper "I'm scared." Haven is that string — modernized, encrypted, and reaching across any device on earth.

Works with

No signal

Needs

No account

Costs

No money

Trusts

No server

Why Haven

It started at the Mothership.

I spent time at Urban Peak's Mothership — Denver's shelter for youth experiencing homelessness — and met kids who simply hadn't had a fair shake. Sharp, resilient, and failed by systems that were never built for them. It opened my eyes to a need I couldn't put down: someone has to look out for the kids the world overlooked.

Around the same time, my nieces got their first Apple Watches. I kept staring at those little screens on their wrists and thinking — that could be a lifeline, not just a toy. A string between a child and the people who love them. The same worry every parent carries about a kid's safety and their future, turned into something I could actually build.

Two tin cups, modernized — so safety and a way up belong to the kid holding the phone, with no one in the middle.

— Terrence J. Kostelny, founder

What's inside

A toolkit, not a service.

Everything runs on the device first. Nothing here depends on a subscription, a signal, or anyone's permission.

📡

A lifeline that holds

A peer connection that passes messages phone-to-phone — even on an Apple Watch, even with no signal — so a kid can reach the people who love them when the network can't.

🗂

Document vault

IDs, records, and important papers, encrypted in the phone's secure hardware. Unlocked by you, synced to no one.

🧭

What's nearby

Shelters, food, clinics, and survival-calibrated weather alerts — cached on the device so the list still works when the connection doesn't.

🍕

Dignity by default

Medication reminders arrive as a pizza emoji — nothing private on the lock screen. Small choices, made with lived trauma in mind.

🌿

Steady support

Gentle, shame-free wellness tools paced for hard days, plus a daily "enjoy your evening" card — because joy is a human right, not a luxury.

🆘

Help, kept quiet

Discreet ways to call for help and stay safe — a bright SOS, an alarm, and low-key alerts — alongside on-device guidance and a clear path to 988 and partners like Urban Peak. Fast to reach, easy to keep private.

Swift native modules
Expo / React Native
SQLCipher (on-device)
Secure Enclave · CryptoKit
Bluetooth mesh
On-device + cloud AI
Supabase (anonymous, zero-PII)
WidgetKit · watchOS

Beneath these sits a deeper layer of personal-safety and discreet-alert tools — quiet ways to signal danger, de-escalate, and reach a guardian or 911 when seconds matter. We document those for shelter partners and App Review rather than publish them here, because for the people who rely on Haven most, the quietest features are the safest ones.

A way up, not just a way out

From a pizza emoji to a law degree.

Haven keeps going after the emergency passes. An AI résumé builder turns two years caring for a grandmother into "patient care, medication scheduling, emotional support" — because lived experience is experience. Skills tracks run from a first jobsite job to a CNA cert to a deployed app. The path from "I need shelter tonight" to "I filed my SBA loan" is always open, and always free.

Privacy by architecture

Built so there's nothing to take.

Anonymous by default. No name, no email, no account required to start.
Zero-knowledge. Your documents are encrypted on the device; the servers can't read them.
No tracking, no ads. No analytics that follow you, no data sold, ever.
Zero personal data by schema. The backend is built with no columns for who you are.
Works offline. The safety tools don't stop when the signal does.
Free to the people who need it. Funded by grants and partners, not by users.

Who it's for

Designed for the edges, where apps usually fail.

People living unhoused

A document vault, off-grid messaging, and a current map of what's nearby — that all keep working without a plan or a charge.

Youth aging out of foster care

The papers, contacts, and steady support to land on their own feet, owned by them and no one else.

Survivors rebuilding safety

Private by architecture and quiet by design, so a phone can be a tool without becoming a risk.

Case workers & shelters

A toolkit to hand a client that respects their privacy completely — distributed partner-to-partner, not by app-store marketing.

Where it is today

Built. Heading to the people who need it.

Haven is the app built on the Detective Katie platform — TechJano's Life Operating System for vulnerable youth and communities. It's feature-complete and production-ready, running on iPhone and Apple Watch. What's left is the careful part: privacy review, partner onboarding, and a TestFlight-first rollout to shelters and youth-services partners — federal Runaway & Homeless Youth, Google.org, and Mozilla among the funding fits — so the people who'll rely on it can shape it before it's everywhere.

Two tin cups on a string that can't be cut,
can't be tapped, and works on any device made in the last ten years.

It starts with a pizza emoji
and ends with a law degree, a construction company, or a CNA certification.

The pipeline is always open. The cost is always zero.

Partner with Haven

If you serve people on the edges, let's talk.

Haven is built to be handed out by the people who already do this work — shelters, case workers, youth services. If that's you, or you'd fund it, reach out.

Get in touch Back to portfolio