The ladder
Tollbridge does not get more expensive because time passed. A rung turns only when both conditions hold: the public record reached the next outcome milestone and the intelligence crossed its declared quality gates. If the gates are not met, the ladder stalls — visibly — no matter how large the record grows.
What a rung changes
Questions are always 1,000 / 2,000 / 5,000 credits. A rung multiplies what a credit costs in USD (+25% per rung). Credits already in your account remain credits after a turn — the number on your balance never shrinks; the USD a question settles for does. Buying at an earlier rung means today's USD buys today's questions and tomorrow's questions at the same rate while the balance lasts.
The rungs
Gate: —
State: turning the record on
Gate: at least 1 published calibration band
State: ACTIVE — crossed 2026-10-04
Gate: a sealed intelligence release whose holdout Brier skill beats the reference with its 95% interval above zero
State: not crossed — 6,589 outcomes remaining and no release has yet qualified
Gate: 30 published bands + release version ≥ 2.0.0
State: not crossed
Gate: 100 published bands + release version ≥ 3.0.0
State: not crossed
How a turn happens
- The outcome milestone is crossed — evidenced by the public record itself (the k-th realized outcome's timestamp).
- The intelligence gates are evaluated against latched, append-only gate facts — a gate that was ever met stays met.
- If both hold, the turn is declared and a 24-hour public notice begins. The current rate remains until the notice ends.
- The rate turns. Every historical turn stays on the public record.
- If either condition fails, nothing turns — and the shortfall (outcomes remaining, each gate's current value) is public.
No countdown appears anywhere until a turn is actually declared — urgency comes from real state only, and the machine-readable truth lives at /ladder.json and the API's ladder gate verdicts.
Buy while the rung is early — the honest version
Today's USD buys more credits than it will at the next rung, and credits do not expire while their lot lives (plan and booster lots do carry their own expiry). That is price certainty, not an investment: a credit is a unit of product capacity, and we will never claim it earns, appreciates, or pays. The rate lock exists for payers who want a fixed per-credit rate for 12 months — at a 20% fee, payer-bound, and non-transferable.