02 / 14IN DEVELOPMENTLive parts and proposed parts, each tagged
Product mechanism
Type a question on Ask. TAONIC decides what kind of work it is, routes it, and shows the answer with its record. You do not need an account, and nothing is charged.
VERIFIED
- 01Question
- 02Capability
- 03Route
- 04Provider
- 05Answer
- 06Record
- Question. You ask once, in plain language.
- Capability. TAONIC reads what kind of work the question needs.
- Route. It picks an available route for that work, with a fallback.
- Provider. A provider or Bittensor subnet does the work.
- Answer. The result comes back with its provenance.
- Record. The request, its route and its cost are recorded.
This is the whole product today, and it runs in production. Everything after the record, in the loop below, is proposed.
Seven kinds of question. Each is routed to the providers that do that work; whether a kind can be answered right now depends on its route being configured, which Routes shows live.
| Capability | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Answer | Research, explain or compare, in plain words. | “Explain what a Bittensor subnet is and how emissions reach miners and validators.” |
| Search | Current information from the web, with sources. | “What has Bittensor announced this week?” |
| Market | What forecasters expect, from prices to crypto events. | “Will OpenSea launch a token by the end of 2026?” |
| Check a claim | What the evidence says, and what is missing. | “Is it true that Bittensor has a hard cap of 21 million TAO?” |
| Image | An image from a description. | “Draw a violet isometric data center floating above a calm sea, soft light.” |
| Speech | Read text aloud, or transcribe a short recording. | “Read this aloud: Bittensor is a network of subnets that pay for useful work.” |
| Find a match | The closest matches by meaning, not keywords. | “Which Bittensor subnet would I use to transcribe a podcast?” |
The answer first. Beneath it, View provenance opens the record of that one request:
- the capability TAONIC detected, and each step of the plan it ran;
- which route was tried, which answered, and whether any fell back or was skipped;
- the provider and, where there is one, its Bittensor subnet, plus whether TAONIC reached it directly or through an intermediary (OpenRouter, for the subnet 64 text route);
- total time and the provider’s share of it;
- input and output tokens, as the provider reported them;
- the customer charge and revenue, both a real
$0while charging is off; - the request id, which is also the id of its durable record.
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Question length | 8 to 4,000 characters |
| Questions per minute, per visitor | 6 |
| Answer length | 450 / 900 / 1400 tokens for brief / standard / detailed |
| Whole request, every step and fallback included | 100 s |
| A repeated identical question | Reuses the finished answer for 5 minutes; the provider is not called again |
Submitting twice is safe: the button is disabled while a request is on its way, and an identical question inside five minutes returns the same finished answer, marked as reused.
| Outcome | What happened | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Answered | A route returned a usable answer. | Nothing. |
| Answered after a fallback | The first route failed or was skipped; another answered. The record names both. | Nothing. |
| Configuration required | The question needs a route whose credential is not set. Nothing was sent anywhere. | Ask a different kind of question, or check Routes. |
| Route unavailable: the provider | Every route that could answer failed or could not be reached. | Try again shortly. |
| Route unavailable: TAONIC’s own limit | TAONIC paused the route until 00:00 UTC to stay within its own daily provider limit. Nothing was sent, and the provider did not fail. | Try again after 00:00 UTC, or ask a kind of question another route serves. |
| Timed out | The provider did not answer inside its deadline. | Try again, or ask for a brief answer. |
| Rate limit reached | More than six questions in a minute from one visitor. | Wait a minute. |
| Rejected | The request was not in a form TAONIC accepts (too short, too long, wrong shape). | Rephrase it. |
| Offline | Your browser could not reach TAONIC at all. | Check your connection. |
Error messages are fixed sentences written by TAONIC. No provider’s own error text, and no credential, is ever shown.
Accounts
Accounts are off, so every question is anonymous. When they are switched on, a signed-in request will also appear in that account’s own history; see 05 Activity and accounting.
PROPOSED
- 01Paid requests
- 02Provider cost deducted
- 03Eligible surplus
- 04TAO reserve growth
- 05Better capabilities
- A reader asks for useful intelligence.
- TAONIC selects an eligible route.
- A provider delivers the result.
- TAONIC records the usage and the actual provider cost.
- Paid usage creates revenue.
- Refunds, payment fees, provider costs, operating obligations and tax reserves are deducted.
- Eligible surplus may be converted into TAO under the published reserve policy.
- Reserve evidence strengthens credibility, capability funding and the balance sheet.
- Better capabilities attract more usage, and the loop restarts.
Paid intelligence is the primary source of value. A fee on a future TAON / TAO market could supplement the reserve, but trading a token creates no productive revenue, and this design never counts it as such. How the price would work is in 06 Pricing and charging status, the reserve in 07, the token in 08 and the market in 09.
Every state on this page matches Status. Where they ever differ, Status is right and this page is a defect.