Most developers learn the same way. You watch a tutorial, you grind a few algorithm problems, you build a to-do app that nobody will ever use. And then you hit a wall: the only way to prove you can do real work is to already have done real work. The internet is full of advice telling you to “just contribute to open source” or “build a portfolio” — but it never tells you how to get paid while you do it, or how to find work that’s scoped small enough to actually finish.

We kept running into the same gap. On one side: thousands of developers who can write good code but have no track record. On the other: teams and founders sitting on a backlog of small, well-defined tasks — a bug fix here, a component there, a migration nobody has time for — that never quite justify a hire. Forke exists to connect those two sides.

The idea: real work, scoped small, paid fairly

Forke is a marketplace for coding bounties. Someone posts a task with a clear description and a bounty attached. A developer claims it, does the work, and submits a solution. When it’s approved, the bounty is released. The funds sit safely in escrow the whole time, so neither side has to trust the other on faith.

That’s the whole loop. It’s deliberately simple, because the magic isn’t in the mechanics — it’s in what the loop produces over time: a public, verifiable history of real contributions you actually got paid for.

Why XP and levels are not a gimmick?

Every task you ship earns XP, and XP moves you up through levels. It would be easy to dismiss this as game-y decoration, so let us be clear about what it’s for. A level on Forke is a compressed résumé. It says: this person has claimed real tasks, shipped them, and had them approved by the people who posted them. That signal is hard to fake and it compounds.

A portfolio shows what you chose to display. A Forke profile shows what you actually finished — and what someone was willing to pay for.

What we believe?

A few principles shaped everything we built:

• Work should be paid. Practice is good, but getting paid for real contributions is how you build both skill and a reputation at the same time.

• Scope is everything. Small, well-defined tasks are finishable. Finishable work is what actually moves a developer forward.

• Trust should be built in. Escrow, clear approval, and a public record mean fewer disputes and more shipping.

• Reputation should be portable. The track record you build on Forke is yours — a real, growing proof of what you can do.

Where we go from here?

This is the first post on the Forke blog, so it felt right to start with the why. From here we’ll write about the things we’re building, the engineering decisions behind them, and the developers shipping real work on the platform. If that sounds like something you want to be part of — whether you’re here to claim bounties or to post them — we’d love to have you.

Welcome to Forke. Let’s ship something real.