The Robo Kyle Guide

1. The big picture

Everything on the site exists to get real devices and real software into real people's lives. The skills, the XP, the votes, and the forum all serve that. The whole system is built around works. A work is a design, a program, a guide, or a standard that people publish, build, improve, and connect together.

You do not earn anything here for being loud. You earn when other people confirm that what you made is real and useful. That is the rule behind every number on the site.

2. The nine skills

Everyone has nine skills. Each one levels separately from 1 to 99. Your profile shows all of them, so anyone can see what you are good at.

Mechanical

CAD, mechanisms, linkages, structural design.

Publish mechanical designs and earn votes on them.

Fabrication

Making physical things by any process. Printing, soldering, machining, laser cutting, casting, sewing.

Build things. Post a build of any design in its Produced section with photos and notes. You earn Fabrication whether the build succeeded or failed. Assembling a circuit counts as much as printing a bracket. Honest failure reports are useful and earn XP too.

Electronics

Circuits, PCBs, sensors, motors, power.

Publish electronics works and earn votes on them.

Software

Firmware, apps, servers, APIs.

Publish software works and earn votes on them. You can show a live deployment in a work's Produced section, but it earns nothing. Building the thing is the achievement, not running it.

Systems

Integration. Making parts work together.

Publish works that combine other works. A kit that combines a spoon, a socket, and a connector is a Systems work.

Ability

Fit, comfort, one handed use, real usability.

Post fit reports. A fit report says who used the device, what worked, and what did not. You never need to touch CAD to be valuable here.

Documentation

Guides, part lists, diagrams, standards writing.

Improve other people's documentation. Submit a revision to a work with a thin guide. If the author or the community accepts it, you earn Documentation XP and are listed as a contributor. Your own work's docs count as part of the work itself.

Design

Industrial design, looks, ease of use.

Publish works weighted toward Design and earn votes on them.

Community

Helping people.

Get answers accepted in Talk and on works. Write downvote reasons the community endorses. Do moderation work that holds up.

The tenth skill

There is one more, and you cannot grind it. Innovation has no level and no bar. It grows when your ideas prove out in the world. Someone builds your design. Another work incorporates yours. Works adopt a standard you wrote. You never earn it from your own actions, only from what other people do with what you made.

3. How earning works

Every point of XP comes from a specific event, and most events require someone else.

  • Publishing a work earns a starting amount, split across the one to three skills you declare for it. The community can dispute a work that claims skills it does not show.
  • Upvotes on your works earn XP, weighted by who is voting. A vote from someone with a high level in that skill counts far more than a vote from a new account. Early votes carry the most XP, so a late pile on adds little.
  • When someone posts an accepted build of your design, they earn Fabrication and you earn Innovation plus a share across your work's skills.
  • When another work includes yours as a component, you earn Innovation. Once per work.
  • Standards you write pay you each time a work is verified as following them.
  • Accepted doc revisions, accepted answers, and accepted fit reports each pay their skill.

There are daily limits on the things you can do alone, and identical files cannot be uploaded twice for credit. Every gain and loss appears in your public XP ledger, which anyone can read. Nothing is granted by hand and nothing is hidden.

4. Levels, titles, and the two big numbers

Each skill runs from 1 to 99. Early levels come fast. Later ones take real time. Reaching 99 marks that skill's color on your profile ring for good. All nine at 99 is called Maxed. XP keeps counting past 99, so maxed players keep climbing the rankings.

Skills carry titles at milestone levels. Mechanical runs from Apprentice to Inventor. Ability runs from Helper to Life Changer. Your current title shows next to your name when you comment.

Two numbers summarize you. Total Level is your nine levels added together, up to 891. It measures breadth. RoboXP is everything you have earned, with social XP counting slightly less than work XP. It is never capped, and it ranks the Creators page, which you can filter by skill and by need.

A specialist can top RoboXP with a modest Total Level. A generalist can carry a high Total Level on mid RoboXP. Both are real.

5. Your avatar

Your profile picture is generated from your skills. It is a circle of nine wedges, one per skill, in the same position for everyone. Each wedge fills with its skill's color as you level. In the middle is a mark generated from your username. New accounts show a plain dark ring until they earn their first points, so you can tell who is proven and who just arrived.

6. Votes, downvotes, and saying why

Upvote what is good. Your vote's weight grows with your level in the relevant skill.

Downvoting requires a reason. Every downvote opens a small box asking why. Your reason posts into the thread as a card without your name on it, and people can vote on the reason itself.

If the community endorses your reason, you earn Community XP. If the community rejects it as unfair or lazy, the reason is struck. The downvote is undone, the person you hit gets their XP back, and you lose double what the downvote took. A struck verdict sticks even if you withdraw the vote.

A downvote costs one honest sentence. If you cannot write the sentence, do not cast the vote.

7. The Produced section

Every work has a Produced gallery for real results. There are three kinds of posts.

  • Builds. You made the thing. Post photos, your process, and how it went. Success, modified, and failed are all welcome, and all three earn Fabrication.
  • Deployments. For software, a link to the thing running. Good for trust, worth no XP.
  • In use. The device in someone's daily life, with fit notes.

Votes on Produced posts answer one question. Was this result useful? A well documented failure deserves upvotes. A blurry success photo does not. Works show their Produced count and a success rate per version. Those are the strongest trust signals on the site.

8. Publishing a work

Three stages, saved automatically as you go.

  1. What it is. Name, short description, need tags, and photos.
  2. How it is made. Steps. Each step carries its own files and links, so the bracket file lives on the printing step. A step can also be another whole work. Your steps become the build guide.
  3. Ship it. Preview the page, declare which skills the work represents and in what split, and publish.

Works are versioned. Updating one keeps every old version's history, builds, and comments. Because components are their own works, updating a part updates everything that uses it. You fix the spoon once, not five kits.

9. Connectors

Works can declare connection points.

  • Provides means the work offers a connector. A quick release face, a data API, a mounting rail.
  • Accepts means the work attaches to that connector.

Each connector type is defined by a standard, which is a work in its own right with the exact specs. Dimensions, tolerances, pinouts, API details. Every standard has a hub page listing everything that provides it, everything that accepts it, and every adapter that bridges it to other standards. You can check whether two things mate before you print either one.

Body mounts are connectors too. Devices declare which body site they mount to, like a wrist, a forearm, or a wheelchair frame, with fit fields like circumference range. You can search by your anatomy and find devices that fit.

Standard authors earn XP each time a work is verified as compliant. Adapter makers get incorporated wherever two ecosystems meet.

10. Tools and parts

Works list what they need. Equipment like a printer or a soldering iron, and materials like bolts and filament. Kits total up parts from their components.

List the equipment you own once on your profile. Nobody else sees the list. Every work then shows whether you can build it or what you are missing.

11. Talk

Talk is the forum. Boards match the nine skills. There are three kinds of posts.

  • Posts about a work. Discussion attached to a specific work, which stays pinned at the top.
  • Questions. The asker can accept an answer. Accepted answers earn Community XP, and that is the only XP in Talk. Forum votes are worth no points on purpose.
  • Plans. An idea looking for collaborators. People join, the plan grows, and one button promotes it into a real work with the participants credited. On the Ability board this also runs in reverse. Users and caregivers post needs looking for builders.

Deep reply chains fold away by default, and tangents can be split into their own posts.

12. Fair play

XP only flows from verifiable events, and every event is on the public record. Duplicate uploads earn nothing, since the site keeps one copy of any file. Rings of accounts boosting each other stand out in the data and get unwound, and the points come back off the ledger. Every profile's ledger is public, so the community usually spots nonsense before the system does.

Play it straight and none of this concerns you.

13. Where to start

  • Own a printer? Build any device and post it in Produced.
  • Write code? Publish a tool.
  • Good with words? Find a solid device with a weak guide and submit a revision.
  • Use adaptive devices, or care for someone who does? Post fit reports. They are the most needed contribution on the site.
  • See how things should fit together? Study the connector hubs, build an adapter, or write the standard everyone is missing.

If it is real, it counts, and everyone can see why.

Browse the works