How Signal works

Watts (⚡) are Signal's reputation currency. You can't buy, sell, gift, or transfer them — the only way to get Watts is to test products, and the only thing to spend them on is getting your own product tested. New builders start with 200 Watts.

• Sweep — 100 Watts. A quick first-impression check, ~5 min.
• Lock-On — 300 Watts. A guided walkthrough plus 3 issues, ~20 min.
• Deep Scan — 600 Watts. Everything in Lock-On + a UX critique and a video, ~45 min.

1. An owner lists a product in a tier.
2. A tester tunes into a channel — the owner is charged that tier's cost, and a 48-hour window starts.
3. The tester submits a structured report. No Watts are paid yet.
4. The owner reviews it. If they approve (3★ or higher), the tester earns the full reward and the owner gets a +10% review bonus at no cost to them. If they reject (1–2★), the tester earns nothing and the report is flagged.
5. If the owner never reviews within 5 days, the report auto-approves so testers aren't left hanging (no owner bonus in that case).

Every earn and spend is written to your Watt ledger, visible to you at all times.

To keep the feedback useful. Rewards are tied to owner approval, so low-effort or nonsense reports earn nothing. Be specific, reproducible, and actionable and you'll get approved.

A no-show (the 48-hour window lapses without a submitted report) costs you 50 Wattsand a reputation strike (capped so one bad week can't tank you). The owner is refunded, since they never got their report.

You need to be a Verified Builder to list your own products. Verification proves you control your product's website — you place a token (a meta tag on your homepage, or a/.well-known/signal-verify.txtfile) and we fetch your site to confirm it. Pasting a random link won't work. Start it from your console.

As long as you want. When listing, you can set an optional active window (2 days, a week, etc.) after which it auto-closes — or leave it open with no limit. You can pause, reopen, or close it anytime from your console.

UX Sleuth tracks broader UX critique, and Onboarding Critic tracks first-impression / onboarding feedback. Reports you write contribute to these based on the tier.

You sign in with Google. Your session lives in a secure, http-only cookie the browser can't read, and the API is only ever reached with short-lived tokens minted per request — nothing long-lived sits in your browser to steal.