Acknowledgement Force

A daily contract for your Mac. Acknowledgement Force gates your screen behind your own words: the window won't close until you've read today's contract, ticked the box, and named the one thing that matters most. Free, open source, and native to macOS.

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Requirements

• macOS 14 (Sonoma) or newer, Apple Silicon or Intel

• Xcode or the Command Line Tools (provides the swift compiler):

  xcode-select --install

Install

Clone the repo and run the installer. It builds a release binary, packages it into a native Acknowledgement Force.app, and installs it.

git clone https://github.com/Clupai8o0/force.git
cd force
./install.sh

By default the app is installed to ~/Applications (no sudo needed) and launches when the build finishes.

Command	What it does
./install.sh	Install to ~/Applications
./install.sh --system	Install to /Applications (prompts for sudo)
./install.sh --prefix DIR	Install into a custom directory
./install.sh --no-open	Don't launch the app after installing
./install.sh --replace-others	Remove copies in other locations without asking
./install.sh --keep-others	Leave copies in other locations in place

install.sh is safe to re-run — it cleanly replaces any previous copy, so it doubles as the upgrade path.

No accidental duplicates

Before installing, the script checks the common locations (~/Applications, /Applications) and anywhere it has installed before for an existing Acknowledgement Force.app outside the current target. If it finds one — e.g. you ran the default once and --system later — it offers to remove the stray copy so you don't accumulate duplicates. In an interactive shell it asks; otherwise pass --replace-others or --keep-others to decide up front.

Note that even if duplicate bundles exist on disk, the app enforces a single-instance lock at runtime, so only one copy can ever actually run.

The app is ad-hoc signed for local use. It is not notarized, so if you move the .app to another Mac, Gatekeeper may warn you. Building from source on the target machine (the steps above) avoids that.

Usage

1. Launch Acknowledgement Force from Spotlight or Launchpad.
2. Read the day's contract, tick the acknowledgement box, and write your single highest-leverage action. The window stays locked until you do.
3. Once acknowledged, the gate opens and you can close the window.

Auto-launch

Enable auto-launch from the app's onboarding screen or Settings. This installs a user LaunchAgent (~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.acknowledgementforce.agent.plist) so Force resurfaces on your chosen cadence:

Frequency	Behaviour
Every launch	Re-acknowledge each time Force opens
Every hour	Re-locks one hour after each acknowledgement
Every 12 hours	Re-locks twelve hours after each acknowledgement
Once a day	One acknowledgement carries the whole day
Once a week	One acknowledgement carries the whole week
On login / restart	Re-acknowledge on every login and restart

Your acknowledgement history is stored locally at ~/Library/Application Support/Force/acknowledgements.log.

Make it stop

If you need to immediately quit the app and stop it from relaunching without a full uninstall, run:

./stop.sh

Uninstall

./uninstall.sh            # remove the app + auto-launch agent (keeps your data)
./uninstall.sh --purge    # also delete saved history and preferences
./uninstall.sh --system   # also look in /Applications

Build from source (development)

swift build                 # debug build
swift run Force             # build & run
swift build -c release      # optimized release binary

The release binary and its resource bundle (Force_Force.bundle) land in the directory printed by swift build -c release --show-bin-path.

Project layout

Sources/Force/      SwiftUI app source + bundled fonts
landing/            Marketing site (static HTML/CSS/JS)
install.sh          Build + package + install the .app
uninstall.sh        Remove the app, agent, and (optionally) data
stop.sh             Quit now + disable auto-launch (no uninstall)
VERSION             Release version (drives the bundle version)

Releasing

1. Bump VERSION (e.g. 0.2.0).

2. Commit the change.

3. Tag and push:

   git tag -a "v$(cat VERSION)" -m "Release v$(cat VERSION)"
   git push origin "v$(cat VERSION)"

The version in VERSION is baked into the .app bundle's CFBundleShortVersionString at install time.

License

See repository for license details.