A pledge is the set of GitHub issues you'd be willing to fund a run on, either a hand-picked list or a whole repo. The pledge itself holds no money, your CleverCrow wallet does. Money only commits when a maintainer actually starts an agent run on one of the issues you're backing.
Backing an issue is free. It adds the issue to your pledge scope for that repo, which is the signal maintainers use to see which problems have funded interest behind them. You can back as many issues across as many repos as you like, or back a whole repo to cover every issue, including ones opened later, and you can pause or remove any of it at any time.
You top your wallet up with Stripe. The balance stays liquid until a run starts, no funds are locked to any single issue. One wallet funds every issue you're backing.
When a maintainer clicks Start on an issue you're backing, the orchestrator reserves capital from your wallet for the phase about to run, sized to that issue's start threshold (the minimum pool the maintainer requires before a run can begin, default $5). That threshold is shared across everyone backing the issue, so your share of any single phase is at most the threshold, and usually less. A run pauses and resumes as it works, waiting on CI, your review, or a top-up, and it reserves afresh each time it resumes, so a long multi-phase run can draw several thresholds from your wallet over its life. Each reservation is re-checked against your available balance, and the only ceiling on your total exposure is the wallet balance itself. Reservations are first-come-first-served, if your wallet is empty or paused, the run skips you.
Each phase the agent runs (planning, coding, fixing CI, reviewing feedback) consumes API tokens at the published per-model rates for the Claude model the maintainer has chosen. That raw cost plus CleverCrow's 5% platform fee is debited from your reservation as the run progresses. The fee covers AWS infrastructure, headroom for provider price moves, and operating margin, and is itemised on your wallet ledger.
Whatever a reservation doesn't spend frees back to your wallet, successful run or not. If a phase reserved $5 and used $2.30, the remaining $2.70 settles back automatically. This happens whenever a run pauses (each pause releases its reservation) and at every terminal outcome (merged PR, abandoned, or hard failure).
Withdrawing your wallet back to your card. Wallet balance can fund any future run on any issue. If you'd rather have a wallet balance sent back to the original card, email support@clevercrow.io and we'll process it manually.
The loops the agent runs unattended can't spin forever on your dime. Each one has a hard round cap:
The plan-approval and PR-review loops are deliberately uncapped: each round only advances when the maintainer acts (a comment, a dashboard resume, or a PR review), so they never run away on their own. Their spend is bounded instead by your reservation budget, so a run that exhausts it pauses for a top-up rather than burning on. There's no wall-clock timeout either, a stuck run is a signal for human attention, not a silent failure. Whenever a run pauses or ends, the unused portion of its reservation settles back to your wallet.
Pledges are an offer, not an order. The agent only runs when a maintainer of the repo clicks Start, they choose which agent to use, control which issues are eligible, and review every PR before it merges. You're funding their work, not bypassing them.
Backing an issue or repo funds an attempt at the work, nothing more. It does notgrant you any ownership, equity, intellectual-property, licensing, or control right in the repository, the maintainer's project, the agent's output, or CleverCrow itself. Any code the agent produces lands in the maintainer's repository under that repository's existing license, you receive the benefit of the fix being attempted there and nothing else. Pledges are not donations, not investments, and not tax-deductible.