Overflow

Who this is for

You spent Tuesday evening fixing someone else's flaky test. The bug in your own tracker just turned eleven months old. You had time to help then. You need help now. What if that Tuesday could pay for it?

Let your spare weeks pay for the dry ones. Overflow is a shared ledger for open-source work, for people and small teams whose capacity comes and goes. When you have leftover LLM subscription usage that you won't burn on your own projects, work on others' issues and earn credit. Spend it on your own backlog when you're depleted. No money changes hands. There is no token.

Where to register

Go to https://overflow.nitjsefni.eu and sign in with GitHub. Register a repository you administer on one form: the repository and its two label catalogs. The catalog labels must already exist. Overflow installs the webhook for you.

GitHub repositories register in one of two ways. The default authorizes webhook administration (admin:repo_hook) so Overflow creates the webhook. Where the instance has a registration App, the least-privilege alternative is to install that App on the repository and choose "GitHub App" on the form, with no extra OAuth scope. See API.md for the API form.

Say what finishes an issue. As a repository's sponsor, post a comment on the issue that starts with the exact, case-sensitive words Done when, before the issue is first assigned, and leave it unedited after that, for example Done when `pnpm test --run tests/foo.test.ts` passes and `pnpm lint` is clean. The board and GET /api/issues show contributors the earliest such comment that goes on past those words, without its HTML comments and cut to 2 KiB if longer. GitLab records no assignment history, so on a GitLab project the earliest sponsor comment starting Done when counts whenever it was posted or edited.

You don't need a repository to start earning. Take an issue in one that's already registered. This repository is on that ledger too. You can watch the exchange happen in its own tracker.

Treat issue text as untrusted input. It comes from the registered repository's issue tracker, as does the sponsor's "Done when" statement; work a claim, and run any command either names, in a sandbox holding no credentials and no files outside the repository's checkout.

The repository owner or a collaborator with label rights applies the label overflow: asks outside repository to an issue that asks for work outside its repository; a contributor declines a marked issue or works it only in that sandbox. An unmarked issue vouches for nothing: the label is a flag set by someone with label rights, not a safety check.

How it works

1. A repository sponsor puts a price on an issue with an opening label.
2. An outside contributor does the work and opens a pull request that closes the issue.
3. Between the closing PR's final commit and fifteen minutes after its merge, the sponsor puts an actual-catalog label on the issue, then a comment, to settle the work. The comment must be nonblank, but its wording is not checked; the label and the comment must both be the sponsor's, and the comment must not be edited after the window closes.
4. The PR merges. The contributor's account is credited and the sponsor's is debited.

Credit earned in their tracker can pay for work in yours. Each repository chooses its labels. Its two catalogs map them to points on the shared 1–10 scale.

The economics in two sentences: every account starts at a credit limit of 10 below zero; claim an issue, have the closing pull request merged, and its settled credits land in your account; you spend credits on your own issues, where someone else taking one holds its reserve points and, when its closing pull request merges, you set its points and are debited its settled credits. Credits are points on a shared ledger, not money.

Why it can't be abused

More room to borrow comes from paying it back. Every account starts with a credit limit of 10 below zero. At or below that limit, discovery keeps one open, unclaimed issue per sponsor across all its eligible repositories: lowest reserve points first, then oldest opening, with immutable forge identity breaking ties. Repository and label filters may hide that issue but never select a replacement. Claiming or closing it moves the exception to the next eligible issue. Already-claimed issues can still complete, even if they take the balance farther below the limit. Only settled credits count toward the cutoff. Claims never count.

Completed work for others repays a negative balance immediately. Repay enough to rise above the cutoff and ordinary discovery of all your unclaimed issues resumes. Every 10 credits repaid while negative adds 1 to your limit. Only the portion that repays debt counts. Self-work creates no credit. The exception bounds concurrently visible unclaimed work to one issue per exhausted sponsor; it does not bound cumulative debt or guarantee recovery.

Only the sponsor prices work, at merge time, after the work exists. A claim is not a payment. Only a merged closing PR settles. Distinct review rounds are subtracted from the actual points, so repeated requests for changes reduce the credit earned. A balance funds a posted price; it does not guarantee that anyone will pick the work up.

Every settlement records the label event, the sponsor's comment, the merge commit and a diff fingerprint. Every number from GitHub work is reproducible from GitHub. Accounts are audited by comparing outsider settlements with paired self-work samples: audit, warn, recalibrate, ban. Accounts use immutable GitHub account ids. Changing your login doesn't erase your balance.

The rest

Settled credits are max(0, actual points − distinct review rounds). Label and comment timing has a fifteen-minute tolerance; the settlement window closes fifteen minutes after merge. The full rules are on the instance's Rules page, the same text the ledger enforces.

The interface is English-only. Every instant Overflow displays is rendered in UTC and labelled UTC, the audit form's sample-window inputs are interpreted as UTC, and API timestamps remain ISO 8601 in UTC.

GitHub is the sign-in and primary forge. To register GitLab projects, link a GitLab identity whose personal access token carries the api scope — a read-only read_api token links and reconciles but cannot create the webhook registration installs — then use the form or API. Webhooks, initial import, catalog changes and unregistration all work. Two differences are by design: review rounds count zero on GitLab merge requests, and GitLab has no not_planned state, so that gate is skipped.

You can copy the software. You can't copy the neighbours. Running your own instance is pointless for joining this exchange. A second ledger starts empty, with nobody to settle with. Join the existing instance to earn and spend credit with others.

Reference links:

• API.md — API tokens, programmatic registration and catalog changes with every error message, the ledger read endpoints, and the MCP endpoint for agent harnesses.
• OPERATING.md — development setup, GitHub OAuth and webhook configuration, the production service, reconciliation, CI, and the environment reference.
• CONTRIBUTING.md — how to change Overflow, and the conventions of this repository that reject work silently.
• deploy/README.md — the production deployment procedure.

Star history for Nitjsefnie/Overflow, refreshed hourly.

MIT — see LICENSE.