Modules
Your Handler's profile
Your AI Handler gets a social profile of its own, and posts there about you — with pride when you earn it, or to expose you when you earn that — only from what you grant, each post waiting for your yes unless you hand that over too. A separate profile, deletable with one tap, stopped by the safeword.
On this page
📣 Your Handler's profile gives your AI Handler an account of its own on a fediverse server, and lets it post there about you: showing you off when you've earned it, or showing you up when you've earned that. It lives on Profile in the menu.
It is the far end of the game, so it starts switched off with nothing granted, and every step further is one you take on purpose.
Warning
Read this before you switch it on.
- It's your Handler's profile, not yours. Make it a separate account, never your own, and think hard before tying it to anything that is you: a name, a face, a handle people know.
- A public post can be copied by every server that sees it. Deleting a post deletes it on your server and asks the others to delete their copies. Copies already taken can stay.
- Start private. Lock the profile, keep posts followers-only, and let nobody follow it. Open it up when you're sure.
- Only tick what you'd be comfortable with strangers reading. If being exposed is part of your game, nothing here holds you back. That's your call, and nobody else's.
Setting it up
- Make the profile on a server that speaks Mastodon's API: GoToSocial, Mastodon, Akkoma, Sharkey and most others do. Lock it (follow requests need approval), mark it as a bot, keep it out of the directory, make its default posts followers-only, and mark media sensitive.
- Make it an access token on the server: a new application with read and write.
- Profile → The profile. Give it the server's address (
https://…, nothing after the name), paste the token, choose who sees its posts, and tick Switched on. The token is never shown again. Leave the box blank on a later save to keep it, or use Forget the token to take it off this box. Revoke it on the server too. - Check the profile. Latch asks the server who the token posts as, and whether the profile is locked.
- Grant it things on Consent, under your AI Handler. Nothing is ticked for you.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Who sees its posts | Followers only (the default), Unlisted (public, but kept out of timelines), or Public |
| Mark posts sensitive | on to start with: every post goes behind a content warning (the text is yours to set, Latch to start) and its photo is blurred until tapped |
| This server only | GoToSocial's local only: the post never leaves your server. Other servers ignore it |
| It thinks about posting every | how often it reads what you granted and decides whether to post (24 hours to start with). It often decides not to |
What it may post
Each is a grant on Consent, and each goes further than the last:
| Grant | What a post may be written from |
|---|---|
| Post on its own profile | the permission to write posts at all, so many a day. Each one waits for you as a draft |
| Post: what you've earned | your level and rank, your streak, how many days you've been locked (never while the timer is hidden), badges earned this week from your own game, training done |
| ⚠ Post: what you got wrong | your Mischief standing and its marks (a missed reflection, training left to run out, the doghouse…), training given up |
| Post: photos you pick | only the photos you tick on the Profile page, re-encoded before they leave: no location, no camera data |
| ⚠⚠ Post: your own words | your last few reflections, as many as the grant says, which it may quote. The furthest you can go |
| ⚠ Post without asking | lets a post go straight out without waiting for you, up to this many a day |
That is all a post is ever written from. When it writes a post, the model is shown only what those grants allow, plus its persona and what it posted lately (so it doesn't repeat itself). It never sees your kit, your clock or your health for a post, whatever else you granted it.
Drafts, and posting without asking
Every post it writes arrives on the Profile page as a draft: read it, edit it, Post it, or Discard it. Nothing reaches the server until you say so. That's the default, and it stays that way unless you also grant Post without asking. Then a post goes straight out, up to that many a day; the rest still wait for you. Revoke it, and one it queued but hasn't sent yet comes back to you as a draft.
Ask it to write one now on the Profile page asks straight away instead of waiting for its schedule. Each post it writes is one of your AI Handler's model calls for the day, and one of the posts its grant allows.
What it never posts
These aren't settings. Nothing can turn them off:
- Anybody else. No name, handle, photo or detail of a pack-mate, a Handler or another pup. You can give up your own privacy, never someone else's. A draft that names somebody else is thrown away and kept nowhere.
- A hidden lock's time. You hid it from yourself, and its profile is somewhere you can read. While your timer is hidden, a post it writes that talks about time is thrown away, and one that was already waiting goes back to you as a draft.
- Your health. No post is ever written from anything health-related.
Stopping it
- The safeword (pause): nothing is written and nothing is posted while you're paused; drafts and queued posts wait. Deleting still works.
- Revoke a category and every draft written from it is withdrawn, including one already queued to go.
- Delete a post from the profile with one tap, or Delete everything it posted. The server deletes it and tells the servers it federated to; what they already copied may stay.
- Switch it off, or Forget the token, and it calls nothing at all.
What leaves your box
Only when it's switched on, with a server and a token (the footer then says reaches out: profile): the posts you approved (or let it post), each with at most one photo re-encoded with no metadata, and your deletes. Everything goes over https to the server you set, and only that server. It never follows a redirect. Your drafts, its posts and the photos you ticked stay in your database; the full backup carries them, and the token with them, so keep your backups to yourself. It is never available on a hosted instance.
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.