wtf is the-one?

the-one is a self hosted personal commitment system that lets someone restrict their own devices in a way they cannot easily undo on the spot. It is built around a central control plane, hosted by the user themselves and reachable only over a private Tailscale network, which holds the rules for every enrolled device. Each device runs an agent that pulls its rules from the plane, applies them locally, enforces them, and reports back its status. The key idea is an asymmetry between making rules stricter and making them looser. Strengthening a rule takes effect immediately, but weakening or removing one is delayed by a default of 24 hours and must be done from the central plane, never from the restricted device itself. The README is explicit that this is personal infrastructure for one person's own use, not a parental control product or commercial device management tool, and it is upfront that different platforms offer very different levels of real enforcement. The project has four main parts sharing one shared policy format: a schema package defining the rules and how strength is compared, a FastAPI and Postgres control plane with a web interface for creating rules, a Linux agent built in Python that can block hosts and stop processes, and an Android agent that provisions itself as a Device Owner using Android's kiosk style Lock Task mode. The README repeatedly and strongly warns that the Android agent is difficult to remove: a release build has no in app way out, and if a user gets locked out and cannot reach the device over adb, the only recovery is a full factory reset that erases everything. It urges practicing on a spare device or emulator with a debug build first. Setting up the control plane requires Docker and Tailscale, copying an example environment file, filling in a database password and Tailscale IP address, and running docker compose up. The plane only listens on the private Tailscale address, never on the public internet, and pairing a new device requires the operator to approve a one time pairing code before the device receives any access token. The project is explicitly marked as alpha status, incomplete, and unsupported.