diff --git a/src/servers/api/users/provision-os.ts b/src/servers/api/users/provision-os.ts
index 90bd473f..15dcf5da 100644
--- a/src/servers/api/users/provision-os.ts
+++ b/src/servers/api/users/provision-os.ts
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ import { ensureOsUser, osUserHome } from '@@/os-user';
 import { provisionSshAccess } from '@@/os-user-ssh';
 import { seedShellConfig } from '@@/os-user-shell';
 import { provisionClaudeCli } from '@@/os-user-claude';
+import { provisionPostgresRole } from '@@/os-user-postgres';
 // Disabled 2026-08-13 — see the commented-out step in provisionOsAccount below.
 // import { provisionRootlessDocker } from '@@/os-user-docker';
 import { provisionUserDirs } from '@@/data-path';
@@ -78,6 +79,19 @@ export async function provisionOsAccount(params: {
   // cannot do it for them and must not try, because the alternative is lending them the owner's credential.
   const claude = await provisionClaudeCli({ email: params.email, osUser: account.osUser });
 
+  // A Postgres login role of the same name, with CREATEDB. What replaced rootless Docker for the
+  // "let me run a database to develop against" case, at roughly none of the cost.
+  //
+  // Also the step that shuts PUBLIC out of the platform's own database — deliberately inside the function
+  // that creates the role rather than in the setup script, so it cannot be skipped by an install that was
+  // set up before this existed. See os-user-postgres.ts.
+  const postgres = await provisionPostgresRole({
+    email: params.email,
+    osUser: account.osUser,
+    uid: account.uid,
+    gid: account.gid,
+  });
+
   // ── Rootless Docker: DISABLED 2026-08-13, code kept ──
   //
   // Every member got their own rootless daemon, unconditionally, on the argument that "can I run a database
@@ -105,9 +119,17 @@ export async function provisionOsAccount(params: {
   // Reported in order of consequence, not in order of execution: no keys matters more than a plain prompt,
   // which matters more than no containers. Only one is surfaced because the UI shows one line — the rest are
   // in the log.
-  for (const step of [claude, shell] as const) {
+  for (const step of [claude, shell, postgres] as const) {
     if (!step.ok) console.warn(`[users] ${params.email}: ${step.error}`);
   }
-  const error = !ssh.ok ? ssh.error : !claude.ok ? claude.error : !shell.ok ? shell.error : null;
+  const error = !ssh.ok
+    ? ssh.error
+    : !claude.ok
+      ? claude.error
+      : !shell.ok
+        ? shell.error
+        : !postgres.ok
+          ? postgres.error
+          : null;
   return { osUser: account.osUser, sshPublicKey, error };
 }
diff --git a/src/servers/os-user-postgres.ts b/src/servers/os-user-postgres.ts
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..f1007211
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/servers/os-user-postgres.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,264 @@
+import { mkdtemp, rm, writeFile } from 'node:fs/promises';
+import { tmpdir } from 'node:os';
+import { join } from 'node:path';
+import { sql } from 'drizzle-orm';
+import { db } from 'officerdb/db';
+import { osUserHome, runAs } from './os-user';
+
+// A Postgres login role for a member, named the same as their Linux account.
+//
+// This is what replaced rootless Docker per member (disabled 2026-08-13). The use case was always "let me
+// run a database to develop against" and a container per member was an expensive way to answer it — one
+// daemon, one image cache and one subuid range each. A role on the cluster that is already running costs
+// a row in `pg_authid`.
+//
+// ── What the member gets ──
+//
+//   CREATEDB      as many databases as they like, owned by them. Not one database provisioned for them:
+//                 the ask was to create databases in their own name, not to be handed one.
+//   ~/.pgpass     so `psql` never prompts. Mode 600, owned by them, written the same way as their SSH
+//                 keys — see os-user-ssh.ts for why every write into a 700 home goes through
+//                 `sudo install`.
+//
+// ── What keeps them out of everything else ──
+//
+// Measured on postgres:18-alpine, 2026-08-13, because every part of this was wrong when assumed:
+//
+//   - A fresh `CREATE ROLE … LOGIN` CAN connect to `officer`. `pg_database.datacl` is NULL, which means
+//     default privileges, which for a database means PUBLIC holds CONNECT and TEMPORARY. That is why
+//     `ensureAppDatabaseClosed` exists and why it runs before any role is created.
+//   - Once connected it can NOT read an application table. Table privileges default to owner-only and
+//     nothing grants to PUBLIC — `has_table_privilege('users','UPDATE')` is false. So the capability model
+//     was never reachable from here; the exposure was catalogue metadata, not data.
+//   - Revoking from the ROLE does not help. Postgres privileges are additive and there is no DENY, so a
+//     PUBLIC grant is not overridden by a role-level revoke. Revoking from PUBLIC is the only lock.
+//
+// ── The residue, stated rather than implied ──
+//
+// A database one member creates is readable-as-metadata by another: `datacl` is NOT inherited from the
+// template (measured — closing `template1` and creating from it still produced a NULL `datacl`), and
+// `CREATE DATABASE` fires no event trigger, so nothing can close a member's database at the moment they
+// create it. A second member can connect and read table and column NAMES from the catalogue. They cannot
+// read a row, and they cannot create anything (PG15+ removed PUBLIC's CREATE on `public`).
+//
+// Closing that needs either a sweep or a `pg_hba.conf` rule per member, and both are decisions rather
+// than details. Not built. Do not let this comment be read as "handled".
+
+/** Legal Linux/Postgres account name. Identical to `validateUsername`, restated because this one reaches SQL. */
+const ROLE_NAME_RE = /^[a-zA-Z0-9._-]{2,32}$/;
+
+// Deliberately alphanumeric. This value is interpolated into `PASSWORD '…'` as a literal, because
+// CREATE ROLE is a utility statement and cannot take a bind parameter — so the safety has to come from
+// the alphabet rather than from escaping. No quote, no backslash, nothing to terminate the literal with.
+const PASSWORD_ALPHABET = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789';
+const PASSWORD_LENGTH = 40;
+
+// Every attribute stated, including the negatives, and shared by CREATE and ALTER so the two cannot drift.
+// The defaults are already NO* for all of them — writing them down is what makes a hand-made change to a
+// member's role show up as a difference rather than as the way it always was.
+const ROLE_ATTRIBUTES = 'LOGIN CREATEDB NOSUPERUSER NOCREATEROLE NOREPLICATION NOBYPASSRLS';
+
+/** Uniform over the alphabet by rejection sampling — `% n` on a byte would bias the first 4 characters. */
+export function generatePassword(length = PASSWORD_LENGTH): string {
+  const max = 256 - (256 % PASSWORD_ALPHABET.length);
+  let out = '';
+  while (out.length < length) {
+    const bytes = new Uint8Array(length);
+    crypto.getRandomValues(bytes);
+    for (const byte of bytes) {
+      if (byte >= max) continue;
+      out += PASSWORD_ALPHABET[byte % PASSWORD_ALPHABET.length];
+      if (out.length === length) break;
+    }
+  }
+  return out;
+}
+
+/**
+ * Where `.pgpass` should point, taken from the platform's own connection string.
+ *
+ * The member connects to the same cluster the platform does, so deriving it means one fact rather than two
+ * that can disagree. Postgres is published on loopback only, which is why 127.0.0.1 is the fallback rather
+ * than a guess.
+ */
+export function pgpassTarget(postgresUrl: string | undefined): { host: string; port: string } {
+  if (!postgresUrl) return { host: '127.0.0.1', port: '5432' };
+  try {
+    const url = new URL(postgresUrl);
+    return { host: url.hostname || '127.0.0.1', port: url.port || '5432' };
+  } catch {
+    return { host: '127.0.0.1', port: '5432' };
+  }
+}
+
+async function sudo(args: string[]): Promise<{ ok: boolean; out: string }> {
+  const proc = Bun.spawn(['sudo', '-n', ...args], { stdout: 'pipe', stderr: 'pipe' });
+  const [out, err] = await Promise.all([new Response(proc.stdout).text(), new Response(proc.stderr).text()]);
+  return { ok: (await proc.exited) === 0, out: `${out}${err}`.trim() };
+}
+
+/** Same shape as os-user-ssh's: content, owner and mode in one step, so the file never exists at the umask. */
+async function installFile(params: { content: string; dest: string; uid: number; gid: number; mode: string }) {
+  const dir = await mkdtemp(join(tmpdir(), 'officer-pg-'));
+  const staged = join(dir, 'staged');
+  try {
+    await writeFile(staged, params.content, { mode: 0o600 });
+    return await sudo([
+      'install',
+      '-o',
+      String(params.uid),
+      '-g',
+      String(params.gid),
+      '-m',
+      params.mode,
+      staged,
+      params.dest,
+    ]);
+  } finally {
+    await rm(dir, { recursive: true, force: true });
+  }
+}
+
+/**
+ * Shut PUBLIC out of the platform's own database.
+ *
+ * Runs here, before any role is created, rather than once in the setup script. The guarantee then lives
+ * with the code that creates the hazard: an install whose setup predates this, or was run by hand, or was
+ * restored from a dump, still cannot end up with a member who can connect to `officer`.
+ *
+ * Idempotent — REVOKE on a privilege that is already absent succeeds and changes nothing.
+ *
+ * The platform is unaffected: it connects as a superuser, which bypasses privilege checks entirely. That
+ * is also the reason this is safe to run against a live server.
+ */
+export type AppDatabaseClosedResult = { ok: true; database: string } | { ok: false; error: string };
+
+export async function ensureAppDatabaseClosed(): Promise<AppDatabaseClosedResult> {
+  try {
+    const [row] = await db.execute<{ current_database: string }>(sql`select current_database()`);
+    const database = row?.current_database;
+    if (!database) return { ok: false, error: 'could not determine the current database' };
+
+    // TEMPORARY as well as CONNECT. CONNECT is the lock; TEMPORARY is the only other thing PUBLIC holds by
+    // default, and leaving it grants a connected superuser-adjacent role nothing but a way to fill a disk.
+    await db.execute(sql`REVOKE CONNECT, TEMPORARY ON DATABASE ${sql.identifier(database)} FROM PUBLIC`);
+    return { ok: true, database };
+  } catch (ex) {
+    return { ok: false, error: `could not close the platform database to PUBLIC: ${asMessage(ex)}` };
+  }
+}
+
+const asMessage = (ex: unknown): string => (ex instanceof Error ? ex.message : String(ex));
+
+export type PostgresRoleResult =
+  | { ok: true; role: string; created: boolean; passwordSet: boolean }
+  | { ok: false; error: string };
+
+/**
+ * Give the account a Postgres login role of the same name.
+ *
+ * Idempotent, and the two halves are idempotent differently. The ROLE is adopted if it exists. The
+ * PASSWORD is only (re)set when `.pgpass` is missing, because we do not store it anywhere else — so a
+ * reprovision of a working account must not rotate a credential the member may have pasted into an
+ * application config. A missing `.pgpass` is the one case where rotating is the only way to get back to a
+ * known state, and there is nothing to lose by then.
+ *
+ * Never throws. Same posture as its neighbours in `provisionOsAccount`: an account with no database role
+ * is still a working account.
+ */
+export async function provisionPostgresRole(params: {
+  email: string;
+  osUser: string;
+  uid: number;
+  gid: number;
+}): Promise<PostgresRoleResult> {
+  // Before anything else, and before the role can exist to take advantage of it.
+  const closed = await ensureAppDatabaseClosed();
+  if (!closed.ok) return { ok: false, error: closed.error };
+
+  // Re-asserted here even though `validateUsername` already ran at the route. This string reaches SQL as an
+  // identifier, and the distance between that check and this one is a whole call chain — the kind of gap
+  // where a future caller arrives without having passed the first one.
+  if (!ROLE_NAME_RE.test(params.osUser)) {
+    return { ok: false, error: `'${params.osUser}' is not a usable Postgres role name` };
+  }
+
+  const home = osUserHome(params.email);
+  const pgpass = join(home, '.pgpass');
+
+  try {
+    const existing = await db.execute<{ rolname: string }>(
+      sql`select rolname from pg_roles where rolname = ${params.osUser}`,
+    );
+    const created = existing.length === 0;
+
+    // Tested AS THE MEMBER, through runAs — a 700 home is unreadable to the service user, so a `test -f`
+    // run as ourselves reports "missing" for a file sitting right there, and would rotate their password on
+    // every single reprovision.
+    const probe = runAs(params.osUser, ['test', '-f', pgpass]);
+    const hasPgpass = (await probe.exited) === 0;
+
+    const passwordSet = created || !hasPgpass;
+    const password = passwordSet ? generatePassword() : null;
+
+    if (created) {
+      await db.execute(sql.raw(`CREATE ROLE "${params.osUser}" ${ROLE_ATTRIBUTES} PASSWORD '${password}'`));
+    } else {
+      // Re-asserted rather than assumed. An adopted role may have been altered by hand between runs, and
+      // this is the only place that states what a member's role is allowed to be.
+      await db.execute(sql.raw(`ALTER ROLE "${params.osUser}" ${ROLE_ATTRIBUTES}`));
+      if (passwordSet) await db.execute(sql.raw(`ALTER ROLE "${params.osUser}" PASSWORD '${password}'`));
+    }
+
+    if (passwordSet && password) {
+      const { host, port } = pgpassTarget(process.env.POSTGRES_URL);
+      // `*` for the database field: they may create as many as they like and every one of them is theirs.
+      // psql ignores a .pgpass that is group- or world-readable, exactly like ssh and authorized_keys, so
+      // 600 is a requirement rather than caution.
+      const written = await installFile({
+        content: `${host}:${port}:*:${params.osUser}:${password}\n`,
+        dest: pgpass,
+        uid: params.uid,
+        gid: params.gid,
+        mode: '600',
+      });
+      if (!written.ok) {
+        return { ok: false, error: `role ${params.osUser} exists but ~/.pgpass could not be written: ${written.out}` };
+      }
+    }
+
+    return { ok: true, role: params.osUser, created, passwordSet };
+  } catch (ex) {
+    return { ok: false, error: `could not provision the Postgres role ${params.osUser}: ${asMessage(ex)}` };
+  }
+}
+
+/**
+ * Remove a member's role, and every database they own.
+ *
+ * `DROP ROLE` refuses while the role owns anything, which is the common case for exactly the accounts this
+ * is called for. The databases go first and they go permanently — this is called from account deletion,
+ * where the alternative is a cluster that accumulates unreachable databases owned by a name nobody holds.
+ *
+ * Deliberately NOT wired into `deprovisionOsAccount` yet: that function's contract is that a failure
+ * leaves the account intact and retryable, and dropping databases is not reversible. See the call site.
+ */
+export type DropRoleResult = { ok: true; dropped: string[] } | { ok: false; error: string };
+
+export async function dropPostgresRole(osUser: string): Promise<DropRoleResult> {
+  if (!ROLE_NAME_RE.test(osUser)) return { ok: false, error: `'${osUser}' is not a usable Postgres role name` };
+
+  try {
+    const owned = await db.execute<{ datname: string }>(
+      sql`select datname from pg_database where pg_get_userbyid(datdba) = ${osUser}`,
+    );
+    for (const row of owned) {
+      if (!ROLE_NAME_RE.test(row.datname) && !/^[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+$/.test(row.datname)) continue;
+      await db.execute(sql.raw(`DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS "${row.datname}" WITH (FORCE)`));
+    }
+    await db.execute(sql.raw(`DROP ROLE IF EXISTS "${osUser}"`));
+    return { ok: true, dropped: owned.map((row) => row.datname) };
+  } catch (ex) {
+    return { ok: false, error: `could not drop the Postgres role ${osUser}: ${asMessage(ex)}` };
+  }
+}
diff --git a/src/servers/shell-skel/zshrc b/src/servers/shell-skel/zshrc
index 6f1eed63..ab799832 100644
--- a/src/servers/shell-skel/zshrc
+++ b/src/servers/shell-skel/zshrc
@@ -105,11 +105,31 @@ else
 %F{blue}❯%f '
 fi
 
-# ── Docker ──
-# Your own rootless daemon, if Officer provisioned one. Containers you start run as your account in your own
-# user namespace — root inside them is you outside them, and you cannot see anyone else's containers.
+# ── Postgres ──
+# Officer gave your account a Postgres role named the same as your login, and a ~/.pgpass holding its
+# password — so psql never prompts you and you never have to know it.
 #
-# Set from $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR rather than a hard-coded uid so this line is the same in every account's file.
+#   createdb myapp        as many as you like; each one is yours
+#   psql myapp            connect to one
+#   dropdb myapp
+#
+# Nobody else can read your data, and you cannot reach Officer's own database.
+#
+# PGHOST is set because Postgres runs in a container published on loopback: there is no unix socket on
+# this machine, and without this psql fails with "No such file or directory", which reads like Postgres
+# is not installed rather than like it is one flag away.
+#
+# Read out of ~/.pgpass rather than hard-coded, for the same reason the PATH lines above are $HOME-relative
+# — one fact, in one place, that cannot come to disagree with itself.
+if [ -f "$HOME/.pgpass" ]; then
+  export PGHOST="${$(head -1 "$HOME/.pgpass")%%:*}"
+  export PGPORT="$(head -1 "$HOME/.pgpass" | cut -d: -f2)"
+fi
+
+# ── Docker ──
+# Officer no longer provisions a rootless daemon per account (2026-08-13) — a Postgres role covers the
+# case it was really there for, at none of the cost. Kept because it costs one stat and does the right
+# thing if you install rootless Docker yourself.
 if [ -S "${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR:-/run/user/$(id -u)}/docker.sock" ]; then
   export DOCKER_HOST="unix://${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR:-/run/user/$(id -u)}/docker.sock"
 fi