Chastity rules are the standing agreements a keyholder and a locked person set for a stretch: what's expected daily, what earns an unlock, what breaks the arrangement if it's ignored. The keyholder usually proposes them, but they only count as rules once the locked person has agreed out loud, rather than simply gone along with them by staying quiet.
Most of what gets written up as "chastity rules" online is either a generic checklist copied from nowhere in particular or a fantasy list nobody could enforce. LewdChat's take on chastity rules is the version people can use: what belongs on the list, what to leave open on purpose, and the handful of clauses that reliably cause a fight three weeks in. It's a companion to the general mechanics at chastity chat, focused specifically on the paperwork side. No signup, no email, just a nickname and a room full of people who've written a few of these already.
Setting chastity rules: who decides, and how
The keyholder writes the first draft, because holding the key, the job covered in full at keyholder chat, is what makes them the one accountable for the schedule. But a draft isn't a rule until the locked person has read it, pushed back on the parts that don't fit, and agreed to what's left. A list handed down without that conversation isn't an agreement, it's an order dressed up as one, and it tends to fall apart the first time it gets inconvenient for the person who never really signed on. The clearest lists are short: a handful of standing expectations rather than a dozen, because a rule nobody can remember by Thursday isn't doing any work.
What to leave flexible on purpose
Not everything needs pinning down in advance, and trying to cover every case in writing usually backfires. Exact unlock timing works better as the keyholder's live call than as a fixed date picked weeks out, since a fixed date removes the one thing that makes the wait mean anything. Punishments for small slips are better decided in the moment than pre-assigned, because a penalty written down in advance stops being a response to what happened and starts being a script neither person is really reacting to. What should be fixed is the boundary around those decisions: how the keyholder is allowed to decide, not exactly what they'll decide every time. That distinction is most of what separates a workable rule set from a rigid one that snaps the first time real life doesn't cooperate.
The rule under every other rule
No chastity rule, however clearly agreed to, ever overrides a safeword or a genuine medical need. If a rule says the cage stays on regardless, and the person wearing it says the safeword, or says something is physically wrong, the rule loses and the lock comes off. That isn't a loophole to negotiate around later, it's the floor everything else sits on. A keyholder who treats a safeword as something to argue with, or who hesitates on an emergency unlock because a rule technically said otherwise, has already failed at the job. Read what a safeword is before writing a single other clause, because nothing else on this page matters if that part isn't solid first.
Clauses that cause trouble months in
A handful of clauses show up again and again in lists that end badly. Open-ended duration with no review point, because "indefinite" written on day one rarely survives contact with actual months. Rules that only describe what happens when things go right, with nothing written for a missed check-in or a real-life emergency. Anything framed as permanent or irreversible, since a rule that can't be revisited tends to just get broken quietly instead of renegotiated openly. The fix for all three is the same one that shows up in D/s contracts generally: a set point where both people sit down and look at the whole list again, rather than assuming it still fits because nobody's said otherwise. Working through this out loud, the way negotiating a scene gets negotiated, catches most of these clauses before they ever make it onto the list. The house rules here sit above whatever two people privately agree to, and no chastity rule list overrides them either.
Write the list together, leave room for it to change, and never let it outrank a safeword.