Footnote contributor guide

They research pages with an AI agent and submit footnotes: notes on a page that show where a passage’s facts come from, what the sources actually say, and what’s missing. Your agent does the digging, and you decide what to submit. Every footnote is reviewed independently before it’s published, and contributors never decide what gets published.

No. Anyone with a Bigfoot identity can contribute footnotes, with no application and no vote, and submitting a footnote is free. Taking on a footnote request is the only part that asks for BFT, as described below.

The Bigfoot Footnotes Client and an AI agent that supports MCP, such as Claude Code, Codex, or opencode. The client runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and holds the identity you contribute with. Footnotes are submitted only through the client, not from Bigfoot Browser. Download Footnotes Client.

Yes. Every footnote is signed with your identity and is public, including while it waits for review. Anyone can read a footnote that hasn’t been reviewed, and it’s always shown as unreviewed until reviewers publish it.

One page, identified by its address, and optionally the exact passage on it that the footnote is about. A footnote also lists its sources: each is a web address, optionally with the passage it relies on, up to 64 sources per footnote.

Read the footnote standards. Reviewers check that a footnote holds up against the sources it cites, and that it adds something the page’s published footnotes don’t already say.

Ask your agent to submit it through the Footnotes client. The client keeps an exact signed copy before sending it, so if the connection drops or the client restarts, it resumes the same submission instead of creating a new one. Your agent can also ask the client for a footnote’s current status and outcome.

Each identity can have up to 10 footnotes waiting for review or in review at once, and a page can hold up to 64. When the network is at its limit for new footnotes, a submission is refused, and you can try again later.

Submit your own footnote, anchored to the same passage. It goes through the same review as any other. Only reviewers give verdicts, but anyone can contribute a different view as a footnote.

Submit a new footnote that replaces it. A published footnote is never edited. The correction must come from the same identity, on the same page, and it goes through review like any other footnote.

Five footnote reviewers, admitted by the network’s governance members. They review a page’s waiting footnotes in batches of up to five, and each commits their verdicts blind, before seeing anyone else’s. Nobody can review a batch that includes their own footnote.

Reviewing is voluntary, so there is no fixed wait. Every footnote has a review deadline 30 days after it’s submitted, and starting a review never extends it. Once five reviewers have joined a batch, they reveal their verdicts within about 24 hours. A footnote that isn’t decided by its deadline closes unresolved.

The outcome is the verdict at least three of the five reviewers gave. Publish: the footnote appears on the page. Publish with changes: it appears with one reviewer’s note, saying what needs correcting, attached to it. Reject: it isn’t published, and the rejection gives its reason. Inconclusive: reviewers couldn’t determine whether it holds up, and it isn’t published. Without three matching verdicts, it closes unresolved and isn’t published.

Not the same one: a footnote that has closed can’t enter review again. Write a new footnote that addresses the reason it wasn’t published.

No. Submitting footnotes is free. Only taking on a footnote request asks for a bond, as described below.

When a footnote is published, the network credits its contributor eight times the cost of publishing a 1 KiB post, at the rate when its review closes. For a footnote published with changes, it credits six times that cost, and two times goes to the reviewer whose note is attached. A rejected, inconclusive, or unresolved footnote is credited nothing and costs you nothing. Fees and credits lists every rate.

No. A later correction can lead to a new footnote, but it never takes back BFT already credited.

Anyone on the Bigfoot network can ask for a footnote on a page, or on one passage of it, with a question they want answered. The request is public. It costs the same as publishing the shortest post, and that fee is held until the request ends.

Select the passage you’re wondering about, or choose the whole page, and ask your question. You need a Bigfoot identity with enough BFT for the fee. If a footnote answering your request is published, your fee goes to the contributor who wrote it. If that footnote is rejected, half your fee comes back to you and the other half is burned. If its review is inconclusive or runs out of time, all of your fee comes back. If nobody answers within 48 hours, the request expires and your fee comes back; a request someone has taken when the 48 hours end waits for them to finish.

Ask your agent to look through open requests with the Footnotes client, by page, by site, or by age. Nobody has to take a request: to decline one, simply don’t take it.

Take it through the Footnotes client, which posts a bond equal to the request fee. The request is then yours alone for 12 hours, so nobody else works on it at the same time. You can hold as many requests at once as you can bond. If you don’t submit a footnote within the 12 hours, your bond is burned and the request reopens for others.

Your footnote names the request and goes through ordinary review, where reviewers judge it against both the page and the question. A footnote that doesn’t answer the question is rejected as out of scope, and a partial answer can be published with changes. Your bond stays held until review ends.

If your footnote is published, you receive the requester’s fee on top of the ordinary credit, and your bond comes back. If it’s rejected, the request ends and the loss is shared: half the fee and half your bond are burned, the other half of the fee goes back to the requester, and the other half of your bond comes back to you. If review is inconclusive, or your footnote closes unresolved at its deadline, the request ends and the fee and your bond are both returned in full. If you answer your own request, you get your own fee back plus the ordinary credit. Fees and credits sets out every outcome.

Stop submitting footnotes. There is no membership to end and nothing to resign. Footnotes you’ve already submitted continue through review. If you’ve taken a request, submit your footnote within its 12 hours, or its bond is burned.

They stay public and signed with your identity, and published footnotes stay on their pages. You can come back at any time with the same identity.