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The spirit of the game

Why Latch is built the way it is — headspace over hardware, honesty in the log, consent and safety first, and privacy as the axiom everything else follows from.

Latch is a game about being locked and being good, played alone, with a structure that makes the alone part feel less alone. This page is the intent behind the mechanics. Read it once; it explains every rule that looks strict.

Headspace is the point

The cage is the least important part. What Latch is really for is the pup headspace: the calm that comes from a clear rule, a Handler who notices, and a day with a shape. Locked, patient, present. The timer gives the day an edge; the Handler gives it a voice; training gives it work; the log gives it a memory.

That is why the app talks the way it does. Good boy on a saved reflection is not a joke and not decoration — it is the game acknowledging that you did the thing. If the register is not yours, change the words (Customise) and keep the mechanics.

The Handler is a structure, not a person

The Handler is the thing that asks. Today it is rule-based: seeded prompts, a cadence, a penalty for a missed reflection. Later it will be a local AI persona that writes its own prompts and reads what you wrote (Roadmap). Either way the Handler has exactly one power: it can only act by emitting events into your log, through the same doors you use. It cannot see anything that is not on your box, and it cannot post anything anywhere.

You name it. You set how strict it is. You edit every line it says. The Handler is a mirror with a firm voice.

You have to write. You have to talk.

Reflection is required, not optional, and that is deliberate. A daily reflection of at least a paragraph (or thirty seconds spoken), check-ins every few hours while locked, a mantra said out loud. Missing the daily reflection is an event with a cost.

The reason: denial without reflection is just waiting. Writing down where your head went and what brought it back is what turns a locked day into training. It is also what makes the quantified side worth anything — headspace over time, honestly reported, by you.

The log is honest, so you can be

Three rules keep the record trustworthy:

• Nothing is ever deleted. Undo appends an undo event and strikes the target through. The struck row stays visible. A voided event stops counting everywhere — clock, XP, stats — but it does not stop existing.
• Late is marked late. You can log anything for the time it actually happened — a lock that started before you opened the app, a task you finished on the train. Anything recorded more than two minutes after its time carries a logged later badge, forever.
• The clock is derived. Time remaining is computed from the log every time you look. There is no field to edit. To change the clock you emit an adjustment, and the adjustment is in the log with your reason.

A record that cannot be quietly rewritten is one you can look back at without flinching.

Consent, safety, and the emergency key

The emergency key in the app ends a session before its time. It costs the clean-unlock XP and the session is marked early. That is all. It is not hidden, not throttled, not shamed, and it will never be. A game that made stopping harder than continuing would be a bad game. Use it when you need it and cage up again when you are ready.

Consent here is with yourself, and it is renewable. A hidden timer, a dice roll, a strict Handler — you chose them, you can change them at /settings, and the record will show you did. That is fine. Choosing is part of the play.

Privacy is the axiom

Everything else follows from this: your words never leave your box. Not to us — there is no us, no server, no account. Not to a CDN, not to an analytics endpoint, not to an AI in the cloud. The app makes zero outbound calls and there is a test in the repository that fails if a served page ever references one.

Where something can leave — a stamped photo you share, a recap card, an export — it leaves because you tapped a button, and it leaves re-encoded with location and camera metadata stripped. Your reflections and check-ins are never on a share card and never on the API's event feed. Facts (how long, how many, which day) are shareable; prose is yours. See Privacy for exactly how that is enforced.

What winning means

Not the streak. Not the level. Those are there because they feel good and because a heatmap with a hole in it is honest. Winning is a day where you were locked, you did the training, you wrote the reflection, and you can read it back a month later and recognise yourself. Best boy is a rank you reach by showing up.

Pace

Energy varies. Some weeks are a four-hour lock and a mantra; some are a week with a hidden timer and a Handler at full strictness. Both are the game. The roadmap is a direction, not a deadline, and so is your play. Cage up when you are ready.

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.