Playtester Terms and Rubric

• You must be at least 18 years old and use your own confirmed CLI-Games account.
• Apply while signed in through the certified playtester opportunity and accept the current applicant-pool terms.
• An application joins the candidate pool. It is not acceptance into a named cohort, a certification, an offer of work, or authorization for compensated testing.
• We may consider an application for any later cohort, ask whether you remain interested, decline it, or ask you to update or resubmit it.
• Certification is invite-only, belongs to one person and account, and cannot be transferred. We may revoke or routinely retire a certification.
• Unsolicited reports and activity outside an accepted cohort are not compensated.

Cohort 4 counted play runs from August 6, 2026 at 12:00 AM UTC through August 6, 2026 at 12:30 AM UTC. Its structured-report deadline was August 6, 2026 at 1:00 AM UTC. This cohort is complete.

These amounts applied only to Cohort 4. They are not an offer or compensation promise for a candidate-pool applicant or a later cohort. Pay attaches to one certified person in this cohort, not to the number of documents or submissions. A tester may submit one structured report.

An issue must include the evidence requested for its category. The first confirmed report of an issue receives the bonus. Anything on the known-issues list shown before submission or outside this cohort's published scope was excluded.

No compensation is due when the activity minimums are not met (unless a person records an override in the tester's favor), the report is fabricated or plagiarized, or the tester breaches these terms, including the testing-scope limits in section 09.

Base-only example: A tester completes the form, meets the activity minimums, and describes genuine reactions, but reports no new confirmed issues. Total: $10.

Bonus example: A tester completes a verified report and is first to document one reproducible dead end and one inaccurate command behavior with a manual-page reference. Both are confirmed. Total: $20.

For Cohort 4, payment eligibility required server-side records showing all of the following during the assigned play window:

• At least 50 commands.
• Activity on at least 1 separate UTC days.
• At least 5 minutes of recorded active play. Idle and hidden-tab time does not count.
• At least 2 distinct games started.

We also compare concrete-recall answers with the account's records. A funnel-answer mismatch is reviewed by a person and is not an automatic failure. An operator may override a failed check in the tester's favor.

For this cohort, the final submit control stayed locked until these server-side records met every minimum. Testers could refresh the displayed totals before submitting; if a recorded total appeared wrong, they could contact support instead of sending an ineligible report.

CLI-Games respects analytics privacy settings. If activity recording is disabled, the records needed for paid verification will not exist; certified testers must enable it while performing an assigned cohort. Run privacy analytics status before starting. Browser Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signals keep optional analytics off.

Reports must describe your own observations from your own play. Fabricated, plagiarized, or wholly machine-generated reports are not compensated and may end the certification. Tools may help you organize or edit your writing, but they cannot replace the underlying play or evidence.

For Cohort 4, only the first confirmed report of the same underlying issue received the bonus. We retain that cohort's known-issues list and the submitted report snapshot. Those issues were not eligible for additional payment, though they could still be discussed in the experience questions.

• Eligible Cohort 4 payments are made in USD through PayPal within 7 days after scoring, provided the recipient supplies accurate payment information and the provider accepts the transfer.
• We send an itemized scoring notice and keep an internal payout ledger. The ledger records amount, status, and a payment reference rather than a payment-account handle.
• You are responsible for taxes and any accurate payment information required by the payment provider.
• Participation does not create an employment, partnership, agency, or continuing-work relationship.

For this program we record the application, adult attestation, account and certification identifiers, device and experience segment, gameplay telemetry described above, report contents, scoring decisions, notices, payout amount, and payment reference. We do not put payout totals on a public leaderboard.

Certification may place a “Certified Playtester” collectible and title on the account's public player profile. Routine retirement after a completed wave keeps the collectible as an alumni record. Revocation removes it.

Report contents may be quoted internally for development and grouped with similar findings. Pseudonymous finding IDs and report excerpts may be sent to Anthropic's API to suggest duplicate clusters and categories. Those suggestions do not decide eligibility, finding confirmation, scores, or payment; a person reviews every disposition. See the general Privacy Policy for account and analytics practices.

Until submission, the report form saves a draft in this browser's local storage. It is cleared after successful submission or when the server confirms that the wave report already exists.

Before accepting an applicant into a future cohort, CLI-Games will send a cohort-specific offer stating its number, play and report windows, paid scope, excluded scope, compensation, verification minimums, known-issues list, applicable terms version, and response deadline. The applicant must affirmatively accept that offer by its deadline before testing is authorized. Silence or a late response means the applicant is not accepted into that cohort.

An applicant may decline because availability changed without affecting payment already earned in another cohort. A material change to an accepted cohort requires renewed acceptance before it applies. CLI-Games may pause or end the program at any time; changes do not reduce compensation already promised for accepted and completed eligible work. To update or withdraw an application, email [email protected].

Cohort 4: CTF to Range core loop (wave-4-ctf-range-core-v1). This wasthe paid finding scope for this cohort. It does not define a later cohort's paid scope.

Included

• CTF. Starting, understanding, and completing the intended CTF path.
• The Range. Entering, navigating, and completing the intended Range learning and challenge flow.
• Core-loop support. Signup, account confirmation, tutorial, Clide, messaging, IRC, navigation, and other behavior directly needed to accomplish CTF or Range.

Outside the paid finding scope

• Everything outside the core loop. Dustline, HQ, and every other destination, game, world, storyline, beta, experiment, or feature not directly needed for the CTF to Range loop.
• Mobile and narrow-viewport behavior. Phone, tablet, and other narrow-viewport testing is not part of this paid wave.

You may explore anywhere. Record observations outside this scope in the separate out-of-scope notes field; we will read them, but they are not paid findings and do not block this wave's core-loop decision.

Test the experience: play games, learn the material, explore the world, and report where the in-scope core loop is inaccurate, confusing, contradictory, or broken. Do not conduct vulnerability research against production.

Automated scanning or fuzzing, load generation, denial of service, and attempts to access another person's account or data are prohibited and end the certification. The Range is the sanctioned place for offensive skills.

If ordinary play appears to reveal a genuine security issue, stop testing and email [email protected]. It will be handled separately and is not a finding under this rubric.

These terms supplement the general Terms of Service.