Mushi Bounties

The loop closes faster with paid testers in it.

Mushi Bounties is the crowd-testing marketplace built into the evolution loop. Developers publish their app or website to a public listing. Testers — real humans who are not on the team — sign up, use the app, and earn mushi-points for every accepted bug report, accessibility finding, or localization note. Points can be redeemed at a 1.3× premium for Mushi Pro credit, or at base rate for 100+ gift card options via Tremendous (Amazon, Visa, App Store, and more).

This is not a synthetic monitor, a survey, or a focus group. It is the same evolution loop — capture → classify → fix → verify → remember — extended with a motivated human in the capture stage.

How it works

Publish your app

In the Mushi console, go to Rewards → Bounties (Publishing tab). Set your app name, description, hero image, and the platforms you want tested. Configure per-action bounties (e.g., 50 points for a reproduced bug, 200 points for an accessibility issue accepted by your team). Set a monthly budget ceiling and target audience (country, language, device type, minimum tester reputation).

Flip visibility to Public when you are ready. Your app appears on the Mushi Bounties marketplace .

Testers find your app

Testers browse the public marketplace without an account. When they click “Join to test”, they sign in with a magic link. The only information Mushi stores is their public handle, email hash (never plaintext), and the expertise tags they declare. No device recording, no video, no biometrics in v1.

Testers submit bugs

Inside the tester dashboard, each app has a built-in submission form. The submission runs through the same ingestReport() pipeline as host-SDK reports: screenshot upload, PII scrub, console log capture, environment metadata. It lands in your existing Sentry inbox tagged mushi_tester:true so you triage it alongside your production errors — no new tool to learn.

You review and grade

On the report detail page, a tester-submission card appears. Grade the report:

Decision	Points outcome	Reputation Δ
Accept	Full bounty awarded	+7
Informative	50 % of bounty	0
Duplicate	No points	+2 (of the pre-existing resolution)
Spam	No points	−10

Reputation scores gate join-access on future apps with a minimum threshold you configure. Testers with −50 or below are flagged for manual review before any further payouts.

Testers redeem

Testers see their balance update in real time. Redemption options:

Mushi Pro credit — 1,000 mushi-points → $13 of Mushi Pro (the 1.3× premium is a platform coupon, not cash compensation; no 1099 event).
Gift cards — 1,000 mushi-points → $10 face value via Tremendous (taxable at FMV; $599/yr cap before KYC is required; Tremendous holds the money-transmitter licenses on your behalf).

Reward model and legal posture

This section is a summary of the design decisions documented in docs/research/tester-marketplace-research-2026-05-22.md and its follow-up. It is not legal advice. Before enabling gift-card cash-out (tester_cashout entitlement), complete the legal review checklist in docs/runbooks/tester-marketplace-launch.md.

The rewards model is deliberately conservative:

mushi-points are closed-loop platform currency. They are redeemable only for Mushi Pro features or (optionally) for third-party gift cards via Tremendous. They have no exchange rate to USD and cannot be transferred between testers.
The 1.3× Pro-upgrade premium is a coupon, not compensation. It is funded by Mushi (the platform discounts its own product). The IRS classifies issuer-funded discounts as price adjustments, not income (Anikeev safe harbor). No 1099 event is triggered when a tester applies points toward Mushi Pro.
Gift-card cash-out is a separate tax event. When a tester redeems points for a Tremendous gift card, the face value is taxable income at FMV at the time of redemption. Mushi caps this at $599/yr per tester before requiring KYC (W-9 for US, W-8BEN for international). Tremendous files the 1099-MISC; Mushi does not.
No crypto, no prize draws in v1. Reddit Community Points sunset in November 2023 citing “a tough regulatory environment for cryptocurrency projects.” Prize draws require a free Alternative-Method-of-Entry path to avoid being classified as an illegal lottery in U.S. states — both are deferred to a future wave.

Marketing copy rule: say “100+ rewards including Amazon”, never “earn Amazon gift cards.” Amazon’s gift-card terms prohibit framing cards as cash-equivalent or as the primary pitch.

Anti-gaming and reputation

Bounties reuse the existing anti-gaming engine (reporter_devices, anti_gaming_events, private.detect_reward_anomalies()). Additional tester-specific layers:

Velocity caps: maximum 20 submissions per tester per 24h across all apps, maximum 5 submissions per tester per app per 24h. Excess is queued pending reviewer approval before points credit fires.
Reputation scores follow the HackerOne formula (+7 accepted / −10 spam / +50 for a bounty ≥ μ+1σ). Score is recomputed daily by the recompute-tester-reputation cron and gated against published_app_targeting.reputation_min.
KYC gate at $400 YTD: before a tester’s gift-card redemptions cross $400 in a calendar year, they must file a W-9 or W-8BEN. Until cleared, gift-card redemptions are queued; closed-loop Pro redemptions are always available.
OFAC sanctions screen: tester signups and redemptions from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Crimea, and occupied Ukraine are rejected before they reach Tremendous.

Architecture


apps/testers/             Next.js SSR — public browse + signup (kensaur.us/mushi-mushi/testers/)
apps/admin /tester/*      Vite SPA — logged-in tester dashboard (same auth.users pool)
apps/admin /rewards       Dev console — Publishing tab (Wave 2)
packages/server/          API routes: tester-marketplace.ts, published-apps.ts
                          Edge functions: tremendous-redemption-worker (cron)
Supabase DB               mushi_testers, published_apps, tester_submissions,
                          tester_credit_ledger, tester_redemptions, tremendous_orders, tester_kyc
Tremendous API            /v2/orders — platform-funded gift card delivery
Sentry                    Per-app DSN routing: tester submissions tagged mushi_tester:true

Cloud-only feature. Self-hosted installs see an upgrade CTA in place of the Publishing tab and all /tester/* routes.