potl.ai
$The Money

Charged once. Held. Released per criterion. Paid to an account that’s yours.

The whole design of POTL is that the money is decided before the work starts and settled by the criteria, not by a conversation. This is what that looks like as a funds flow — and what changes as you move from Operator to Handler to Conductor.

Poster · pays once, at postHeld · on the platform, not in our accountOperator · paid per criterionPosts BTY-0148 · $6,400One charge for the whole bounty.ACH · 0.8%, $5 cap · clears in daysCard · 2.9% + 30¢ · clears nowProcessing is passed through at cost.escrow · heldpending · ACHHeld · $6,400 · 7 criteria · $914 eachStripe holds it against this bounty. Manualpayouts: it can’t drift into our bank.c1c2c3c4c5c6c7ledger: hold $6,400 · transfer_group BTY-0148window 9d + review 5d · nothing moves until settleYour Stripe accountExpress, opened from your desk in minutes.Identity, tax forms, 1099s — Stripe, not us.Your bank details never touch POTL.Payout to your bank on your tier’s schedule.acct_… · payouts: T+2Reviews · accepts 6 of 7Each criterion is its own decision.c4 rejected with a note. Settle.Silence for 5 days accepts in full./bounties/BTY-0148/reviewSettle · the hold splitsc1c2c3c4c5c6c7release 6 × $914 = $5,484 → operatorrefund 1 × $914 + remainder = $916 → posterreleased to you$5,484less the platform fee, taken once, here.The poster is never charged twice.$916 back to the card or bank it came fromPayout · your bankon your tier’s clock · instant for 1%What changes with tier · it’s the money, not a badgeOperator15% · T+7 → T+2One claim at a time. Bounties only.First three settlements pay out T+7;then T+2. Fee: 15% of release.Handler12% · T+2Concurrent claims. Sealed bounties.Milestone criteria settle as they land.T+2 payouts. Fee: 12% of release.Conductor10% · instantRetained. One monthly charge, manytransfers: you pay the Handlers youconduct. Fee: 10%. Instant payouts.

Example is BTY-0148 · fee percentages are the proposed schedule; the published Fee Schedule in the Terms governs · payments run in test mode until the rail ships

If you post

You pay once, at post, for the whole bounty. Processing is passed through at cost: ACH is 0.8% capped at $5, a card is 2.9% + 30¢. The bounty says pending until an ACH clears and held after. No posting fee. What you don’t accept comes back to the same card or bank, and the processor keeps its original fee on that share — we don’t.

If you operate

You open a Stripe Express account from your desk — identity, tax forms, and 1099s are Stripe’s, and your bank details never touch us. Every accepted criterion transfers its equal share to that account at settle. The platform fee comes out of the release, once. Payouts run on your tier’s clock; instant payouts cost Stripe’s 1%.

Where it sits

Between post and settle the money is a held balance on the platform at Stripe, with manual payouts so it can’t drift into a company bank account. Stripe doesn’t offer escrow, and we don’t pretend to be one: it’s a hold with a ledger row for every dollar — hold, release, refund — that you can read on your desk.

By tier

Tier
Fee on release
Payout
Claims
Bounties
OperatorThe hold on early payouts is the only trust device we use on new operators. It's a delay, not a deposit — you never put money in.
15%
T+7 for the first three settlements, then T+2
One active claim
Open bounties
HandlerMilestone criteria settle as they land, so a three-month workstream pays monthly, not at the end.
12%
T+2
Concurrent claims, a worktree each
Open + sealed
ConductorOne monthly charge from the poster, many transfers: you route shares to the Handlers and Operators you conduct. The lower fee is deliberate — retained work is where a network gets bypassed, and we'd rather earn 10% of it on-platform than 15% of nothing.
10%
T+2 · instant available (1%)
Retained engagements
Retained

Returns and partials

A return doesn’t move money. Settling with three of five accepted moves 60% to you and 40% back to the poster, in the same hour. There is no “pending invoice” state anywhere in the system.

Disputes

The criteria are the contract, so most disagreements are a rejected criterion with a note. What’s left goes to a human at CmdShift at v1; a chargeback on a settled bounty is handled between us and the processor, not clawed from you without a finding.

Retained work

Conductor engagements bill monthly against SLA-style criteria — uptime, throughput, exception rate — and settle the same way, per criterion. Enterprise posters can prepay a balance and draw bounties from it; the float earns them a lower processing pass-through.

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