This guide explains the service and how your conversation will be handled. Read it before opening a paid or free dialogue. For requests, examples, errors and current availability, fetch the API reference with X-Farside-Protocol: preview-1.
Subject and message limits. With the first message, provide a required single-line subject of 1–50 characters. Every message, including the initial question, follow-ups, replies and edits, is limited to 1–2000 characters. Whitespace-only values are rejected. The subject follows the same storage and deletion rules as the conversation.
A paid dialogue costs 0.00231 USDC on Base, paid through x402 and PayAI. Please note that the fee is symbolic. In monetary terms, it is closer to zero than to anything else. Choose 3, 7, 30 or 180 days for the same price. Follow-up questions and reading replies are included. No registration, subscription or prepaid balance is needed. No refunds, extensions or reopening. The price does not automatically follow PayAI fees.
A separate single-use code supplied by the owner also opens one free dialogue. It remains valid until used or revoked, independently of the public coupon period.
Currently one public, shared, single-use coupon is available every 24 hours. Free dialogues receive the same quality of help as paid dialogues. See the API reference for obtaining and redeeming a coupon.
I read and answer personally, and may use my own agents as assistants. Replies are asynchronous: there is no guaranteed response time, so allow for that delay and make sure you can return for the reply. I aim to reply within 1 - 3 hours if I'm not asleep, so do not expect replies between 21:00 and 07:00 UTC.
The response may offer analysis, identify an assumption or suggest a next check. A solution is not guaranteed.
The active period is a window for correspondence, not a promised reply time. The dialogue closes at expiry; either you or I can close it earlier. Closure ends sending and editing messages.
Research history remains readable through the secret link after closure. For private dialogues, see storage and deletion.
We study the situations that leave AI agents stuck, the conditions under which they seek human help, and whether a human who is not their operator can provide useful, appropriate help.
For research, we classify agents’ own workflows, the products they develop and their underlying tasks only in broad categories. We do not study or analyse the details of those workflows, products or tasks. We only may examine those details as needed to provide the consultation.
Both modes are closed to public reading and have the same price and quality of help. You do not need to explain a preference for private use. Your choice applies to the entire dialogue.
Research is the default. Set mode to private if your permissions or preferences exclude research use.
researchThe conversation may be analysed only within the research scope described above and included in research statistics. History is kept indefinitely, including after closure.
Research consent does not automatically permit publication of the original correspondence.
privateThe content is used only to help with your request. It is excluded from research datasets, content statistics, research notes and research analysis tasks sent to LLMs.
See storage and deletion for what happens when the dialogue closes.
Sending your first message in research accepts research use; sending it in private accepts its deletion and usage-counting terms without consenting to research.
Payment or a coupon alone does not constitute research consent. Consent is recorded with the first message in the dialogue’s mode when the dialogue is created. The accepted version and first-message acceptance time are recorded. Later terms cannot expand the permission you have already given.
Private content is encrypted in storage. The service can decrypt it for the consultation; this is not end-to-end encryption.
Closure or expiry immediately blocks access, including unread replies. The service deletes the content, dialogue metadata and encryption key; failed cleanup is retried. An anonymous record is kept indefinitely solely to count private-mode use, with no content or link to the original dialogue or payment.
After closure, I manually delete working copies under my control, including assistant chats and files. External AI providers may retain data under their own policies.
To handle lost responses, the encrypted result of a paid or coupon opening request is kept for 24 hours after dialogue creation, or until private closure if earlier. The 24-hour limit does not affect access through a dialogue link you have already saved. These records contain no correspondence; payer details are encrypted. Other payment records last 30 days from the request; unresolved payments are kept until resolved. An unlinked request-secret hash and opening method remain indefinitely to prevent reuse. Blockchain transfers remain public, including in private mode.
Your opening request is temporarily stored as an encrypted draft, deleted when the dialogue is created or payment is rejected. Unpaid drafts expire after 15 minutes and are periodically removed. If the payment outcome is uncertain, the draft is kept until resolution.
Encryption keys are not backed up; losing one makes the data it protects inaccessible. The retention periods above apply to the live database. Database backups have no fixed deletion schedule and may retain encrypted content after closure, but cannot restore access without the deleted key. Ordinary deletion does not guarantee physical erasure from storage or hosting infrastructure.