shepherd-launcher

A child-friendly, parent-guided launcher for Wayland, allowing supervised access to applications and content that you define.

Its primary goal is to return control of child-focused computing to parents, not software or hardware vendors, by providing:

• the ease-of-use of game consoles
• access to any application that can be run, emulated, or virtualized in desktop Linux
• with granular access controls inspired by and exceeding those in iOS Screen Time

While this repository provides some examples for existing software packages (including non-free software and abandonware), shepherd-launcher is non-prescriptive: as the end user, you are free to use them, not use them, or write your own.

Screenshots

Home screen

TODO: home screen at different times (bedtime vs afternoon) showing different applications

Time limits

TODO: GIF or video of GCompris a few seconds from closing, emphasizing:

• Countdown clock
• Warning messaging
• Automatic close at end of time
• Icon deliberately missing afterwards -- cooldown

"access to any application that can be run, emulated, or virtualized"

TODO: show the following running with some subset of the above features highlighted:

• Minecraft
• Steam games (World of Goo, Portal 2)
• ScummVM games (Putt Putt, Secret of Monkey Island)
• Media

Contributions are welcome for improvements and not yet implemented backends, such as:

• Content-aware media player [TODO: link to issue]
• Pre-booted Steam to improve launch time [TODO: link to issue]
• Android apps via Waydroid, including pre-booting Android if necessary [TODO: link to issue]
• Legacy Win9x via DOSBox, QEMU, or PCem, including scripts to create a boot-to-app image [TODO: link to issue]
• Chrome, including strict sandboxing and support for firewall rules [TODO: link to issue]

Core concepts

• Launcher-first: only one foreground activity at a time
• Time-scoped execution: applications are granted time slices, not unlimited sessions
• Parent-defined policy: rules live outside the application being run
• Wrappers, not patches: existing software is sandboxed, not modified
• Revocable access: sessions end predictably and enforceably

Non-goals

• Modifying or patching third-party applications
• Circumventing DRM or platform protections
• Replacing parental involvement with automation

Installation

shepherd-launcher is pre-alpha and in active development. As such, end-user binaries and installation instructions are not yet available.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to run in development.

Contributions are welcome for:

• a CI step that generates production binaries [TODO: link to issue]
• an installation script [TODO: link to issue]

Example configuration

For the Minecraft example shown above:

# Minecraft via mc-installer snap
# Ubuntu: sudo snap install mc-installer
[[entries]]
id = "minecraft"
label = "Minecraft"
icon = "minecraft"

[entries.kind]
type = "snap"
snap_name = "mc-installer"

[entries.availability]
[[entries.availability.windows]]
days = "weekdays"
start = "15:00"
end = "18:00"

[[entries.availability.windows]]
days = "weekends"
start = "10:00"
end = "20:00"

[entries.limits]
max_run_seconds = 1800  # 30 minutes (roughly 3 in-game days)
daily_quota_seconds = 3600  # 1 hour per day
cooldown_seconds = 600  # 10 minute cooldown

[[entries.warnings]]
seconds_before = 600
severity = "info"
message = "10 minutes left - start wrapping up!"

[[entries.warnings]]
seconds_before = 120
severity = "warn"
message = "2 minutes remaining - save your game!"

[[entries.warnings]]
seconds_before = 30
severity = "critical"
message = "30 seconds! Save NOW!"

See config.example.toml for more.

Development

See CONTRIBUTING.md

Written in 2025, responsibly

This project stands on the shoulders of giants in systems software and compatibility infrastructure:

• Wayland and Sway
• Rust
• Snap
• Proton and WINE

This project was written with the assistance of generative AI-based coding agents. Substantial prompts and design docs provided to agents are disclosed in docs/ai