Start here

Your first lock

A full session in one sitting — cage up, meet the Handler, spin, finish a training task with a photo, look at your progress, unlock.

Fifteen minutes, one short lock, and you will have touched every part of the game.

1. Name your Handler

Open Settings (the gear in the top bar, or /settings). Under 🐾 Handler, the first field is What you call them. "Handler" is the default; "Sir", "Alpha", "Coach" all work — the name appears in every line the Handler says. Save.

While you are there, read the other Handler fields. Leave them at their defaults for now: a 120-character reflection, a check-in every 4 hours, a 30-minute penalty for a missed day.

2. Cage up

Back on the Dashboard. The Cage up card takes days, hours and minutes. Set 0 days, 0 hours, 15 minutes for this run. Ignore the more fold for now (dice, hidden timer, note, started earlier — all explained in Playing). Tap Lock.

The ring starts. The status reads LOCKED, the facts row shows when it ends, and you just earned 20 XP. The top bar shows your rank: runt. Everyone starts there.

3. Meet the Handler

Under the timer is the actions row: 📸 photo · 🐾 Handler · 🎡 wheel · 📋 training. The Handler button is lit with a due badge — you are locked and have not reflected today.

Tap it. Today's reflection prompt is at the top. Write at least 120 characters (the Handler will refuse less, and say so). Or press the microphone and speak for 30 seconds. Save it. Good boy. Reflection logged. +15 XP.

Scroll down: Check-in (five sliders — headspace, obedience, mood, denial, energy — and a line for the Handler), the mantra of the day, affirmations, and a headspace session timer. Do the check-in and say the mantra out loud before you log it. That is the rule.

4. Spin

Back to the dashboard, tap 🎡. The wheel spins on a locked, unfrozen session. Expect one of: time added, time removed, a freeze, a random training task, or nothing. Whatever it lands on is an event in your log, with the segment named, and the clock moves accordingly.

5. Do a training task

Tap 📋. Assign Verification photo from the library (or random). It has a 12-hour deadline and requires a photo — that is what verification means. Tap Complete, choose a photo, done. The photo lands in the Gallery tagged with the task, the task's reward comes off your clock, and you earned its XP.

Try the other direction once: assign Drink a full glass of water, then tap Fail with a reason. Its penalty goes on the clock. Overdue tasks fail on their own at their deadline.

6. Photo check-in

On the dashboard, tap 📸. Pick a photo. That is the whole flow — no task, no prompt. The picture is the entry: it goes to the gallery and the log, attached to this lock.

7. Look at what you did

• Log — every event, newest first, filterable by module. Undo the last one from the dashboard's Session card and watch it get struck through, not removed.
• Gallery — your two photos. Tap one, choose a stamp layout, download it: the overlay shows the clock and streak as they were when the photo was taken.
• Progress — XP, level, streak, a heatmap that has one square lit.

8. Unlock

When the ring completes the status reads TIME SERVED. Tap Unlock in the Session card: Unlocked. Clean run. +50 XP. (If you had unlocked early, the button would have asked for the emergency key and the session would be marked early. That is allowed. See The spirit of the game.)

The finished session shows in the Last lock card with a recap card you can download — sentence, adjustments, frozen time, tasks, spins, photos, your rank.

9. Export once

Settings → Export your data, then Everything (zip). Open it. That is all of your data, readable, restorable, yours. Do this whenever you feel like it; nothing does it for you.

Next

• Playing day to day — the clock in full, undo, freezes, the retroactive log.
• Customise your experience — prompts, wheel segments, the training library, stamp tokens.
• The Handler — the rhythm it expects and the audit it runs.

This page also ships inside the app, at /guide — so your own instance always serves the guide for the version you are running, with the internet unplugged. Get Latch · Something wrong here? Tell me.