Builders & Developers: Share Your AI Coding Sessions

What you'll do

This is data collection, and the data is you working normally. A leading AI research organisation, unnamed in the ad, wants to see how people actually build with coding assistants: when they switch models, how they phrase requests, where they give up and rephrase. You carry on with a project you already have, inside OpenCode (a terminal-based coding assistant), with every session recorded.

The rules are short:

• Work on your own real project, using the open-weight and Gemini models provided
• Pick whichever model you want per task, and switch whenever you naturally would
• Keep to one chat per task

There is no rubric to write and nothing to grade. The value is in your behaviour being genuine, so the honest approach is to do the work you would have done anyway.

Who fits

• Someone actively building a real thing: a side project, a startup, an app, or an LLM-powered feature
• Already using AI tools to build, such as Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Cline, Replit or Lovable
• Comfortable following simple terminal setup on Mac or Linux

Professional coding experience is welcome but not required, and the ad explicitly invites non-coders who build with AI. That makes this one of the more open Mercor listings: the qualification is having a live project, not a CV.

Windows is not mentioned as a supported setup, so Windows-only builders should expect to need WSL or another machine, or to ask first.

What it pays

$500 per accepted session, where a session is about 50 turns and typically 2 to 3 hours of active work. That works out to roughly $165 to $250 an hour of active time, if a session is accepted.

Payment depends on a session being accepted, and the ad does not say what gets one rejected. Payment terms (schedule, method, visa limits) are not published on this listing.

Worth knowing

Good:

• No coding credentials needed; a real project is the entry ticket
• You get paid for work on your own project, using models supplied for you
• Flexible, remote and an immediate start
• $500 per accepted session is strong pay for 2 to 3 hours of work on your own project

Less good:

• Acceptance criteria are not explained, and only accepted sessions are paid
• Your sessions are recorded in full: keep secrets, credentials and any employer code out of the project you use
• Mac or Linux terminal setup only, per the ad
• No payment schedule, eligibility or country terms are published
• Session count and duration of the project are not stated

About this listing

Posted by Mercor as a remote contract and read from the live listing on 12 October 2026, marked as a new opportunity. The pay figure is the one in the ad's project details; the research organisation is not named. See Mercor.