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Show HN: CleverCrow: give tokens to your favorite projects (clevercrow.io)

66 points by zhubert ↗ HN
Howdy all. I'm Zack :wave:. I've been thinking about the problem of misguided AI pull requests and figured I'd throw a possible solution out there for feedback. Basically, CleverCrow lets supporters give tokens to a GitHub repo (or set of issues in that repo) for the maintainers to use to build/fix stuff. The fun implementation challenges have been around implementing the pooling dynamics and keeping the maintainers in charge while the backers are motivated to support their work.

27 comments

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dom96
Is this just basically a bountysource? or are there ways to give projects tokens without just sending them money?
MuffinFlavored
I think I've read from a few different sources that the Claude Code $100-$200/mo plans are subsidized so hard that it's basically $2k-$8k/mo in "would-be" equivalent API token usages.

This kind of makes sense in that space while the subsidies (if true) last?

Unrelated, "tokens" feels very like... back-then blockchain to me. All the craze.

AKSF_Ackermann
Just curious, why is there a login gate before seeing the list of projects that participate in the platform? Usually similar donation(?) websites list those publicly for better visibility and less friction.
tfrancisl
Better yet: give them cold hard cash instead of what is arguably monopoly money for many OSS devs. Ironically this is something GitHub made "easy" with sponsorships several years ago.
accountrequired
At first I was like "i want to use ai but dont have the money to burn for api tokens" cool. But then I realized the backers are essentially saying "i have money and could support developers but i choose to give the money directly to a mega corp and skip the human". I recommend you remove the policy of "Whatever the run didn't spend goes straight back to your backers' wallets." and make sure the human behind the wheel gets to eat. Somehow
fragmede
I had this idea! Happy to see someone actually made it.
adamddev1
One of the cool things about code is that you can build stuff out of thin air, basically for free. It's not like woodworking where you have to pay for the wood.

We are moving into a weird time where people are assuming that now we have to pay machines churn out code.

Somehow they packaged up our own ability to think and are selling it back to us. If they can get us to forget how to do it we'll be the perfect customers, dependent forever.

citizenpaul
I really dislike it but the effectiveness of code generation is just too good now. I really doubted it at first but I can churn out 10x the work. Is it the same quality as IC? no but I think that it doesn't matter anymore. How many of us have worked on some 10+m loc monstrosity for years never knowing more than 1% of the codebase? Probably most. Now I can generate that same monstrosity on my own. I've created a 1.1m+ loc and growing trading platform that automates options trades based on live ML edges from research papers. I never would have been able to do that on my own before LLM's. It has full telemetry and comprehensive error logging and testing as well. I'd have been strained to get MVP done before LLMs.

I don't think someone without coding experience can do it though. I've accepted that the new expected output for a single dev will eventually converge to 10x-100x what it is now.

zx8080
> a 1.1m+ loc and growing trading platform

Why are you here writing comments kn HN? (Instead of counting money and investing it?)

I'm just curious, don't get me wrong.

tadfisher
Congratulations, you've fulfilled one of ThePrimeagen's predictions! (A donation platform for AI tokens)
KomoD
I like the "maintainer stays in control" part, but isn't that also a problem in a way?

The AI provider gets paid, the platform gets paid (20% is a lot in my opinion!), and the maintainer gets more unpaid work: another PR to plan, review, revise, merge, and then maintain... that's a lot of work.

If people are willing to fund an issue, why should that money mainly cover LLM tokens rather than maintainer effort? Or at least, why doesn't the leftover money go to the maintainer instead of back to the donors?

duskdozer
Tokens are better than money. They let you train your skills to get top 1% on LeetPrompt so you have an entry in the lottery to interview for your next temp position.
Zopieux
Ah yes, clearly the one thing I want from my favorite projects is for them to embrace AI coding and immediately deskill such that their value-add or passion for the craft evaporates in the next 3 months.
dofm
Can’t help thinking that if HN had a Black Mirror version (if this isn’t it), this would be one of the ideas in it.

If you like a project enough to donate to them, give them the money directly and let them decide how to spend it. This is just convoluted, weird and vaguely dystopian.

thih9
What if the maintainer doesn’t want to implement a particular feature at the moment?

I suppose this is the most common scenario - I doubt features are not getting implemented because maintainers are lacking tokens.

throwatdem12311
Tokens don’t come with CV clout which is what the vast majority of the slop PRs are really about.
frangonf
I always thought that the donate tokens thing would be done by sending some tokens from your personal sub to the maintainer's pool with some sort of proxy for tokens with rules, in a more direct way without doing it in cash, but yeah that's where the sweet fees live.

If this gets any traction, the "share tokens with a friend" could be good PR for the labs, instead of buy me a coffee, buy me a clanker.

grrinkarthi
Really interesting solution to the AI PR problem. Keeping the maintainers in the driver's seat for issue prioritization is definitely the right approach.

How are you handling the token allocation under the hood, is this managed via a GitHub App integration, and can backers target specific issues or just the repo as a whole?

zhubert
I've got a couple good docs in the footer of www.clevercrow.io that will answer the token stuff. GitHub app integration for all repo interaction. Yep, backers can target specific issues or entire repos, their choice.
grrinkarthi
Perfect, I'll check out the docs. Letting backers target specific issues is a great feature. Thanks for the reply, and best of luck with the platform!
dgan
Just finance the project for god sake, why introducing another "gift card" that they sell at cashiers? Let the maintainer spend the money, maybe he/she needs bread, not tokens
cluckindan
Where can I invest and trade in these ”tokens” you speak of?
zhubert
For posterity: Through a bit of engineering work and better anomaly management, I’ve been able to get the platform fee down to 5%! I’m quite proud of this as there’s a lot of moving parts. In time I’ll probably be able to get it lower too which makes me happy (says the guy that tried to give his first startup away for free). :tada: