Serious tools for a serious thing.
Consensual power exchange is a real relationship structure practiced by a great many ordinary adults. The software available to them is mostly improvised: notes apps, spreadsheets, group chats and memory. We thought it deserved better than that.
The hard part isn't the agreement. It's keeping it.
Couples in a structured dynamic usually start well. They talk it through, they agree on terms, and for a while everyone remembers what was decided. Then it drifts. Expectations get added in passing. A rule gets reinterpreted. Something that was once a firm limit gets fuzzy. Nobody did anything wrong. The arrangement just outlived anyone's memory of it.
That drift is where structured relationships get uncomfortable, and it's a problem software is genuinely good at: write it down once, make changes require agreement, and keep an honest record of what actually happened.
So that's what Collar & Key is: a place to keep the agreement two adults have already made, and to see clearly how it's going. It won't tell you how to run your relationship, and it isn't anywhere to meet anyone. There's no matching and no browsing for partners.
There is a community, though, and we want one. It's optional and off until you turn it on, and it exists so that people already in a dynamic can learn from each other: publish a ritual or a scene plan worth borrowing, follow dynamics whose approach you admire, and help build a library of things actually worth reading.
Our principles
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Consent is a mechanism
If consent only exists in the marketing copy, it isn't real. In this app it's structural: both partners sign, both partners confirm, changes require acceptance, and anyone can stop. We would rather add friction than let one person move the line quietly.
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Discretion is the default
Everything you write is private until you choose otherwise. There is no growth loop that depends on you sharing, no feed that fills itself with your private life, and no advertising business that would benefit from knowing more about you.
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No shame in the design
The people who use this are not doing anything they need to apologize for. The app treats them as adults: stopping is a normal outcome, a missed expectation is information rather than a verdict, and praise is as recordable as correction.
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An honest record beats a flattering one
Where it matters, history is added to rather than rewritten. When an outcome is corrected, the correction sits alongside the original instead of erasing it. A record you can edit into whatever you'd prefer is worth nothing to either partner.
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It should work when the signal doesn't
The app keeps a local copy of your data so today's expectations are there whether or not you have a connection. A tool you rely on daily cannot depend on perfect conditions.
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Quiet unless you ask for more
You set how much the app demands. A task can be left to simply remind you and then get out of the way, with nothing to submit and nothing to approve. Ask for more only where the two of you want the extra rigor. We would rather the app ask too little than too much, because software that needs constant feeding stops being a record of your dynamic and quietly becomes the dynamic.
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We are not the authority on your relationship
The app records what you have decided. It doesn't tell you what a dynamic should look like, rank you against other people, or push you towards anything. What goes in it is yours to determine.
V&B Software, LLC
We're a married couple in a D/s dynamic, and we both write software for a living. This is what we built for ourselves over about two years, because our own arrangement kept drifting and we wanted somewhere honest to keep it. Most of that time went on arguments rather than code. What should require both signatures. Whether a missed task should feel like a failure. How much the app is allowed to ask of you. Everything in here got run against our own relationship first.
The studio behind it is small, not venture funded, and doesn't sell data. The app is paid for by the people who use it, which is the arrangement we want, because it keeps our incentives pointed at them.
With a team of two, you can usually reach a person who actually works on the app. Questions, problems and pointed feedback are all welcome at contact@vandbsoftware.com.
Current status
Collar & Key is in active development and is not yet released on the App Store or Google Play. This site describes the product as it is being built; we'd rather say that plainly than imply availability we don't have yet.
iOS, Android and the web, with your data synced across every device you sign in on.
If you practice this kind of relationship and something here is wrong, missing or badly framed, we would genuinely like to know. Email contact@vandbsoftware.com.