I'm building a Proof of Work app to replace CVs
I'm currently building an app that I initially intended just as a place to create a community of builders.
But working on it made me reflect about how the future of work will be.
I am now getting the impression that what will matter more and more is what you have built over what you say you have built or can do.
CVs seem to have begun a slow march to extinction, especially as more and more people try to build their own businesses and stray from the classic employment path.
This is what led me to change the course of the project to make it progressively into a platform that will let people find projects of any kind or people to build with, but more importantly record every contribution and milestone they have ever made or reached on those milestone to provide. All of those are displayed in their profile in a simple and, I hope, readable manner, for everyone to see.
The daunting parts for me right now are:
- I know that if I want to have users stay and find value, they must not have to do the work of validating the contributions manually. It is too much friction, and it might be easily gamified or nudge people in optimizing for the wrong thing.
- In order to minimize user manual involvement in the process, I need to automate as much as possible the process. But then the hard question is: how do I automate when the contributions could be almost anything ? If it was just code, it would be easy. But what about product discovery, marketing, and all the other possible types of contribution someone could make to the project ?
- The whole contributions system must provide strong and reliable signals to the external world about a user's track record building things. Easy to fake, hard to make.
The point of this article is really simply sharing what I work on and and finding people to talk about these topics that I'm kind of getting obsessed with lately. WOuld be happy to have any constructive feedback or perspective on this.
Have a nice day if you read all the way up to here.
The verification problem you're describing is the hardest and most interesting part of this. I think using project owners as the initial validation layer is actually smart for an MVP. You need to prove the concept before over-engineering the trust system.
One thing I've noticed building my own apps: the contributions that matter most are often the ones hardest to measure. Someone who does customer interviews and shapes product direction creates massive value, but there's no commit history to point to. Meanwhile someone pushing 50 trivial commits looks productive on paper.
If you can crack that distinction you'd have something really valuable. The GitHub-centric view of contributions has always been skewed toward engineering and misses the bigger picture. Your milestone-based approach with linked proof could work well if the proof standards stay flexible enough to cover different types of work.
What does the contributor profile actually look like right now? Is it more of a timeline or a portfolio layout?
Hey ! Thanks for the feedback.
It was also my intuition that the biggest contributions are usually the hardest to measure, but that is also what would make a system that manages to capture them so interesting.
For now, I'm keeping things very simple and flexible regarding the proof standard. I'm just adding the possibility for a project member to add a url to anything he deems valuable to show the owner of the project as proof of contribution when submitting it. Then the owner decides on the quality of the contribution, and can accept or reject validating it based on that(and potential conversations with the member).
The profile has two parts:
If you want to get an idea, you can check mine at https://co-create.quest/users/48ffcfa9-5811-4cfd-8019-8c1c9ff2c8a1/profile
The profile is basic for now, I will implement new things as I go and sort things out regarding contributions. Happy to have any feedback/opinions on this.
I wish you a great day and thanks again for taking the time to answer !
This is a really interesting direction. I think you're tapping into something that’s already happening — the shift from credential-based reputation (CVs, degrees, job titles) to artifact-based reputation (things people have actually built, shipped, or contributed to).
One thing that might help with the verification challenge is thinking in terms of “verifiable signals” rather than “verified claims.” Instead of trying to perfectly validate every type of contribution, the platform could aggregate signals from multiple sources that together form a credibility graph.
For example:
• Code contributions like GitHub commits and pull requests
• Product milestones such as launches, changelogs, or roadmap progress
• Collaboration signals like mentions, acknowledgments, or peer validation
• Distribution signals such as traffic, users, or marketing experiments
• Documentation, planning notes, and decision logs
Individually these signals might not fully prove a contribution, but when combined they become much harder to fake and easier for others to interpret.
Another angle could be building a project timeline where contributions are tied to real events in the life of the project. That way the platform becomes less about people reporting what they did and more about recording how a project actually evolved and who helped move it forward.
In that sense it could turn into something like a public build ledger for projects, where reputation naturally forms from visible participation over time.
Curious if you’re thinking about integrating with existing tools like GitHub, Notion, Linear, or Figma to automatically pull signals instead of asking users to log everything manually.
Hey !
Thanks for the insights. That is were my reflections were leading me indeed. A single signal from a single source will always remain weak. I think that credibility, just like for a scientific theory, comes from aggregating signals that indicate the claim is more likely true than false.
I like the idea of credibility graph, I will look into that as I think this could be an important element to help people both gain credibility and find projects and people to build with.
Regarding the timeline aspect, that is already the direction the app is taking.
A project has milestones. Only one can be open at a time and contributions are linked to the milestone directly. This allows having a real project history with all the build steps with some granularity.
I am indeed thinking of making those integrations, but since it is high maintenance I postponed it for now. But the fact that you are not the first to mention it and that it was my first intuition might make me rethink that.
Thanks for your feedback anyway on the ideas.
If you want to see the MVP, you can go to https://co-create.quest, I'll be happy to have specific feedback about it.
Have a nice day !
This is an interesting direction. I actually think you're right that proof of work is becoming more valuable than traditional CVs, especially in software.
When hiring developers, the most reliable signal is usually what they've built — GitHub repos, shipped products, contributions to real projects — not just what is written on a resume.
The challenge you're describing is the key one: verification. Code is easy because it leaves a trace (commits, pull requests, releases), but contributions like product discovery, marketing, and strategy are harder to quantify automatically.
One approach might be pulling signals from existing systems rather than asking users to manually record work — things like GitHub activity, product launches, project management tools, or even milestone tracking within projects themselves.
If the platform can surface verifiable signals of contribution, that could be very powerful.
Curious how you're thinking about preventing people from gaming the system if contributions become a metric.
I really appreciate the feedback and insights, so before anything thanks a lot for taking the time :)
Pulling signals from existing applications was indeed my first intuition as well. I did not integrate it in the current MVP because I wanted to make sure first that my hypothesis held. I could indeed have integrations with tools like GH, Figma, Notion and so on. I'm currently weighing the complexity of implementing and maintaining integrations with those tools.
For a first quick POC, my hypothesis was that ,if I did not want to do all the work upfront, I needed to put the responsibility of this on the only person that has "skin in the game" in terms of reputation: the owner of the project. I felt this also avoided putting additional burden on the members.
Currently, the owner can create and assign contributions that belong to a given milestone as tasks, and project members can ask for a validation. As I want to test if anybody cares before going further, I plan on having the project member link to a proof of contribution and let the owner decide if it is real or fake.
Then if everything goes well, I will look into automating more and more the proofing process. What is your opinion about this approach ?
Regarding the prevention of the gaming of the system, I'm still trying to figure it out but I think that the answer will lie in having multiple validations from different sources for the same contribution or milestone, each one solidifying the case for the contributions being real. I think as builders trying to find people to work with, reputation is also very important so I will probably dig into that. Are there anything that comes to your mind on this front ?
If ever you have some time and want to check it and give me feedback on it, the MVP is live at https://co-create.quest. Any feedback of any type welcome.
Thanks again for taking the time
The pairing of 'runs locally' + 'no API keys' is undervalued positioning. It speaks to the technical buyer who has already been burned by SaaS tools that changed pricing, added rate limits, or went down at the wrong moment.
The one-time purchase model makes sense when the tool does a defined job well. What's the job this tool does?
That's a very interesting take I had not considered: creating a portable proof of work, more like a crypto wallet for contributions than a platform per say. Is it what you are suggesting ?
The job of this tool is indeed be the single source of truth for projects you have actually built(and failed, as I think this is important to since it helps you do better next time)
Really interesting reflection! I love how you’re thinking beyond CVs and focusing on actual contributions. it’s something a lot of platforms struggle to capture. Automating validation for such diverse types of contributions sounds challenging. Curious how you’re thinking about balancing trust signals with ease of use for contributors?
That is indeed the heart of my problem and what I'm working on most right now.
For now, being in an MVP phase, I put the responsibility of the project's owner to sign off contributions to avoid friction for members. This is far from perfect but I wanted to validate perceived value first.
But the most I wan automate(integrations as mentionned in an other comment), the best it will indeed be. How would you go about it ?