What the app actually does.
Collar & Key organises a negotiated adult relationship: the contract behind it, the expectations that follow from it, and an honest record of how it's going. A dynamic is the one thing the app requires. Beyond that, take the parts that fit the two of you and leave the rest.
Dynamics
A dynamic is the container for everything else. One partner creates it, the other joins and takes their role, and from that point contracts, tasks, scenes and shared journals all belong to the dynamic rather than to either account. Both of you see the same thing.
Life interrupts. Pausing a dynamic suspends expectations rather than failing them: running timers freeze, and tasks that fall inside the pause are excused instead of marked missed. Stepping away for a week should not leave a record that reads like a week of failures.
You can belong to several dynamics with different partners and switch between them. Your role belongs to the dynamic rather than to your account, so it need not be the same in each. They stay completely separate: nothing in one is visible from another.
- Joining
- By join code, shared by whoever created the dynamic.
- Per-dynamic settings
- Safeword, expected check-in cadence, together-since date, and whether the points economy is on.
- Downtime
- Schedule a pause in advance, or start one immediately.
Contracts & amendments
A contract is a set of numbered clauses: expectations, protocols, limits, whatever you've negotiated. While it's a draft, either of you can change it freely and see what the other has proposed.
A contract takes effect only when both partners sign. After that its terms are locked: they cannot be edited in place, by either of you.
To alter a signed contract you raise an amendment. The other person sees exactly what's proposed, what it replaces, and has to accept it before it becomes binding. Withdrawn clauses stay visible as withdrawn rather than silently disappearing.
A dynamic can hold several contracts at once, such as a standing arrangement plus a short-term one, each with its own lifecycle and its own history of who signed what and when.
Tasks, reminders & review
Every task carries a protocol level. At Low, the app only reminds: the task settles as done at its deadline on its own, with nothing to submit and nothing for the dominant to sign off. At Medium, the submissive marks it done, and the checklist, counter or timer is there to help rather than to gate. At High, it cannot be submitted until the requirements are actually met, and it can also demand proof and the dominant's approval.
The level is chosen on each task and can be changed later, so you can run most of a dynamic lightly and reserve the strict handling for the few things that genuinely warrant it. That choice is yours. An app that turns every small thing into something to report stops being a record of your dynamic and starts being the thing you answer to, and we would rather ask too little than too much.
One-off, every day, specific days of the week, or a flexible weekly target: four times this week, you choose which days. The flexible option exists because rigid daily schedules break on the first busy week, and a schedule nobody can keep stops being an agreement and starts being a backlog. Reminders follow the submissive's own time zone, so travelling doesn't turn into a missed task.
Submitted work lands in the dominant's review queue to be accepted or not. No task is ever marked failed by the app on someone's behalf. Outcomes can be corrected afterwards if something was decided unfairly, and the correction is recorded rather than overwriting the original.
- Task shapes
- Simple completion, checklist, counter, timer, or a written explanation.
- Proof
- Any task shape can require a photo alongside it.
- Reminders
- At a set time, or a chosen lead time before the deadline.
- Offline
- Today's expectations are readable and completable without a connection, and sync when you're back.
Rules, rituals, rewards & corrections
Some expectations don't have a due date: how you greet each other, how you ask for something, what's expected in company. Those live as rules and protocols, written down once so nobody has to remember the wording.
The dominant can log praise as well as violations. Recognition being as recordable as correction is deliberate. A log that only holds failures is a distorted picture of a relationship.
If you turn points on, consistency earns them and rewards cost them. If you don't, none of it appears. Consequences and rewards are defined by you, agreed in advance, and drawn from what you've already negotiated.
Scenes & aftercare
A scene is a reusable plan: a title, an ordered set of steps, an intensity, the gear involved and an aftercare plan. Running it creates a session: one scheduled occurrence, with its own notes and debrief. One plan, run many times.
Either partner can propose a session; the other has to confirm it before it lands on the calendar. Sole confirmation is never implicit. It is the same rule that governs signing a contract.
Calling the safeword ends the session and moves directly into the aftercare plan. It is recorded as a stop, not a failure, and there is no blame framing anywhere in the app around it.
Every scene carries an aftercare plan written while you were calm and negotiating, so it's already decided when you need it rather than improvised afterwards.
Journals, interests & limits
Journalling is not all-or-nothing. Each entry is yours alone unless you choose otherwise, sharing is decided one entry at a time, and it can be taken back later. Entries can be grouped into topics, tagged with a mood and illustrated with photos.
A structured list where each partner rates their interest in an activity, including the things that are a firm no. Put both lists side by side and you can see where you overlap, where you're curious, and where one of you has drawn a line.
It is a negotiation aid, and it makes limits explicit instead of assumed. That comparison is usually the most useful conversation the app starts.
Simple analytics over your own history: consistency, streaks, and how expectations have actually gone over time. It's there to inform a conversation, not to score anyone, and nobody outside the dynamic ever sees it.
Community & discover
The community is entirely optional and private by default. You take a handle, choose what to publish, and can stop at any time. Nothing from your dynamic is shared automatically.
Publish a ritual, a task structure or a scene plan for others to adapt, and follow dynamics whose approach you like. What you import arrives as a copy you can edit, and it doesn't stay linked to theirs.
Discover is a member-curated collection of books, podcasts and educational resources about consensual power exchange, with moderation applied before anything goes live.
There is no matching, no browsing for partners, and no explicit content. The community exists so people already in a dynamic can learn from each other.
Platforms & pricing
Collar & Key is being built for iOS, Android and the web, with your information kept in step across every device you sign in on.
We would rather charge nothing for this. We can't. Storage, processing and the servers that keep a dynamic in sync across your devices cost money every month, and V&B Software is a small studio with nobody funding it but the people who use the app.
What we could do was make the free version worth having rather than a trial in disguise, so the app is built to be genuinely usable without ever upgrading. The more advanced features need a subscription, and that money goes to keeping the thing running. When one partner subscribes, the coverage applies to the whole dynamic, so you are never both paying for the same thing. Billing is handled by the App Store or Google Play and can be cancelled there at any time.
The app is strictly for people aged 18 or over. See our safety approach for how that's handled.