adjective · first recorded 2024 · status: canon
Locked in
1.In a state of total, undistractable focus on the task. The SF default answer to "how are you?" during any sprint, fundraise, or launch week.
Don't text him until March. He's locked in.
01Origin
Imported from sports and gaming, where a player who cannot miss is locked in, the phrase became ambient tech-X vocabulary around 2024 and never left. In SF usage it is less a description than a commitment: notifications off, calendar cleared, the outside world formally suspended until the thing ships.
The term carries a whole etiquette. You do not invite a locked-in person to things; you do not take their one-word replies personally; you wait for the launch post, which doubles as the announcement that they have exited the state. Declaring yourself locked in is also the socially accepted way to disappear for six weeks without anyone filing a report.
It is the load-bearing verb of the grind vocabulary: uggmaxxing is locking in dressed for it, grindslop is posting about being locked in instead of being locked in, and Claude Code is the reason you're single is what the lock-in costs. The genuinely locked in, famously, do not post.
02Notable sightings
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