Knowledge base Models and credits
Credits and pricing
You buy credits with Bitcoin and spend them a reply at a time. No subscription, no card, no minimum, and nothing that has to know your name.
Two balances
| Balance | Price | Spent on |
|---|---|---|
| Standard credits | 10 sats each | Auto-routed replies — the model is chosen per task |
| Pro credits | 100 sats each | Replies from a specific frontier model you have pinned |
They are separate and neither converts into the other. The Standard / Pro
switch in the toolbar decides which one the conversation is spending;
?balance shows both, and so does the chat header.
Buying over Lightning
?buy, or the Buy button, opens a Lightning invoice with a
Standard/Pro switch. Pay it from any Lightning wallet — scan the QR, or copy the
invoice — and the balance updates within seconds of the payment settling.
The invoice is not addressed to you in any meaningful sense: it is a payment request, it carries no identity, and the credit it produces is attached to your public key by the ledger. Nothing about the purchase has to be true about you.
If the app closes between paying and crediting, the claim is idempotent — reopen it and the credit lands once, not twice.
What a reply costs
Standard replies cost one credit for an ordinary answer, and more for a task that genuinely needs more work — a long reasoning route or a search-backed answer. The app tells you when a reply cost more than one.
Pro replies cost a per-model base of one or two credits, and then scale with the length of the reply up to that model's maximum. The maximum is reserved when you send the message and only the real cost is charged, so a short answer from an expensive model costs the base even though the budget allowed for more.
?model lists every model with its base and its maximum before you commit to
one. Image and speech generation are charged
per generation instead.
A repository task can use up to six model calls for one message, each billed at the pinned model's price. Only the calls actually made are charged.
Gifting and transferring
?gift @nym#abcdbuys credits and puts them straight onto someone else's nym.?transfer @nym#abcdmoves your whole balance, standard and Pro, to another nym. Useful when you rotate keys; irreversible once it lands.
Both stay on your real nym, because both are about a named account. Moving credits onto a throwaway key works differently and deliberately — as blind vouchers, so the move cannot be used to link the two.
When nothing is charged
You are charged for an answer, not an attempt.
- A generation that fails costs nothing.
- A reply that never reaches you costs nothing — ask again and the turn is replayed, not regenerated. Resending the same message never buys a second answer.
- Local commands —
?help,?balance,?buy,?model,?git,?anon,?clear,?image models— are free. - Running out mid-conversation stops the reply before it is generated and tells you, so a low balance never produces a half answer you paid for.