Build it. Publish it. Grow it. Earn recurring monthly grants on Anna AI OS.
Many incredible hackathon and open-source projects lose momentum after the initial demo because developers lack ongoing funding and real users. We want to change that.
Anna is a next-generation AI OS (Operating System)—a smart platform that handles the heavy lifting like user interfaces, hosting, sandboxed execution, and AI integration.
Through the Anna Founding Builder Program, we support indie hackers and developers who are building practical, everyday apps on Anna OS. Instead of a one-off hackathon prize, you earn recurring monthly grants based on the real users and sustained engagement your apps achieve, while receiving product support and platform resources to help you grow.
Welcome to the Anna Founding Builder Program 2026.
1. The Founding Builder Funding Structure
Here is exactly what you can earn. We have structured our grants to be highly rewarding and linear—the more you grow, the more you earn.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 🚀 September 2026 (Launch Boost Month) ➔ Premium Boosted Cash │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 🔄 Subsequent Months ➔ Ongoing Monthly Grants │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
| Honor Tier & Badge | Required Monthly MAU | Launch Boost Reward (September 2026 Only) |
Subsequent Monthly Grant (Standard Monthly) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier S: The Galactic Sovereign | 20,000+ | $6,000 | $5,000 / mo |
| Tier A: The Growth Titans | 10,000+ | $4,000 | $2,500 / mo |
| Tier B: The Starship Commanders | 4,000+ | $1,600 | $1,000 / mo |
| Tier C: The Orbit Pioneers | 1,000+ | $400 | $200 / mo |
| Tier D: The Stratosphere Builders | 500+ | $200 | $100 / mo |
| Tier E: The Genesis Spark | 200+ | $80 | $50 / mo |
※※※ MAU = App Monthly Active User
Core Reward Rules
- Official Tracking Starts Sept 1st: Official MAU measurement begins on September 1, 2026 (running Sept 1 – October 1). August is strictly a “Build & Beta” phase with zero MAU pressure. August usage does not count toward cash rewards.
- Highest Tier Only: You only receive the grant for the highest tier reached in that calendar month. Tier rewards are non-cumulative.
- No Double-Boosting: Upgrading to a higher tier in later months earns you the standard grant for that tier, not another Launch Boost.
- Independent Monthly Cycles: Each calendar month is measured, verified, and settled as a completely separate cycle.
2. Founding Builder Qualification & Monthly Grants
To celebrate the launch of Anna, we are opening our official Founding Builder Qualification Window:
September 1, 2026 – November 30, 2026
(Developers may begin registering, building, and submitting Apps early starting July 29, 2026).
To officially qualify as a Founding Builder, your App must:
- Be approved and published on the Anna Marketplace.
- Provide genuine, functional utility (no placeholders or simple clones).
- Reach at least 200 Qualified App MAU (Tier E) in any single calendar month during the window.
- Comply with our App Review, maintenance, and fair-play policies.
Our “Founding Friends” Promise
Once qualified, your Founding Builder status remains permanent (unless disqualified under Program Rules).
However, monthly payments are not automatic. To receive a grant, your App must meet that month’s MAU, availability, and maintenance requirements. If your App falls below 200 MAU in a quiet month, the grant is paused but your status remains. Payouts resume automatically the moment your monthly traffic recovers.
3. The September Launch Boost
- September Only: Boosted rewards (shown in the table) are strictly for the September 1–30, 2026 cycle.
- One-Time Payout: Each App can receive the Launch Boost exactly once. It replaces the standard monthly grant for September.
- Later Entries: Apps first qualifying in October or November receive the Standard Monthly Grant.
4. Ecosystem Budget, Capacity & Protection (Our Grandfathering Promise)
Anna currently budgets $80,000 per month for this program. Since our budget is not infinite, we protect our early builders:
- The “Grandfathering” Protection: If total monthly commitments approach $80,000, we will protect existing qualified Apps first. We will NOT cut your active grants. Instead, we will pause the admission of new Apps or transition future applicants to “Season 2” with adjusted rules. Once you are in, your grant is safe.
- No First-Come, First-Served (FCFS): Within any active month, all approved Apps that meet their requirements will be paid in full. There is no race.
- Transparency Alert: We will update the community regularly. If active allocations hit $70,000, we will issue an early warning that the Founding Builder admission window is closing.
5. How Monthly Measurement & Settlement Work
- Calendar-Month Aggregation: We do not take single-day snapshots. We aggregate server-side execution logs from 00:00:00 UTC on the 1st to 23:59:59 UTC on the final day of the month to calculate unique, qualified users.
- Timeline: Logs are audited and deduplicated at month-end. Approved grants are paid within 30 days after the measurement month ends.
6. How We Measure “Qualified App MAU”
To keep the playground fair and high-quality, we define our metrics strictly:
- Qualified App MAU: The number of unique, signed-in Anna users who complete at least one Qualified App Run during a calendar month.
- The Credits & BYOK Policy: Usage counts 100% toward your MAU whether users run your App using Free Anna Credits, paid Credits, or BYOK (Bring Your Own Key).
(Note: BYOK is now live and fully available for use.)
What is a “Qualified App Run”?
To prevent simple click-farms or empty wrappers, a run only qualifies if:
- It is initiated by a valid, signed-in Anna user.
- It successfully executes the App’s declared primary function and returns a meaningful, non-trivial result (not just a static “Done” or heartbeat call).
What does NOT count:
- Merely opening, installing, or viewing the App popup.
- Failed, cancelled, or incomplete executions.
- Automated scripts, bot traffic, device farms, or coordinated self-runs.
- Usage from developer, team, or internal QA test accounts.
7. Multiple Apps & Anti-Sybil Rules
To protect the ecosystem, we will exclude or aggregate rewards if we detect:
- App Splitting: Artificially dividing one workflow into multiple thin Apps to multiply payouts.
- Cloned Apps: Submitting identical functionality under different names, icons, or minor prompt tweaks.
- Coordinated Overlap: Multiple Apps under common control sharing an unusually high overlap of the same users.
Each team must designate a single payment recipient. The same App or grant cannot be double-claimed.
8. App Review Requirements
We only approve complete, independently usable Apps—not raw scripts, bare MCP servers, or technical demos. Your submission must bundle an interactive UI with a working backend.
Our review focuses on:
- Complete App Experience: Must have a usable UI, working backend logic, clear inputs/outputs, and proper loading/error states.
- AI-Native Core: Primary value must depend on AI reasoning or workflows. Superficial chatbot add-ons do not qualify.
- Functional Completeness & Utility: Successfully performs its declared core task and solves a real user problem.
- Distinctiveness & Reliability: No duplicate clones; must operate consistently without broken external dependencies.
- User Experience: Clean, intuitive, and easy for users to operate.
Reviews are normally completed within 3–5 business days.
9. Meaningful Maintenance (No “Form-Over-Substance” Updates)
To remain eligible for your monthly grant, you must keep your App active and maintained.
Each calendar month, you must complete at least one meaningful maintenance or product improvement activity.
10. Fair Play & Anti-Cheat
We have zero tolerance for fraud. Our server-side records are the primary source of truth.
- Allowed: Normal marketing, ads, creator partnerships, community promotion, and offering free product access/credits to real users.
- Prohibited: Paying or incentivizing users (e.g., via micro-task sites, reciprocal groups, or giveaways) purely to generate runs without genuine utility.
- Audit & Appeal: Suspicious Apps will be suspended. Developers have 7 days to provide acquisition or marketing proof. If unsatisfied, the App is disqualified and unpaid grants are forfeited. Developers may submit one written appeal within 7 days of a final disqualification; Anna’s subsequent decision is final.
11. Platform Outages & Measurement Errors
If a verified Anna platform outage (such as Marketplace downtime, login failures, or credit system errors) materially affects your App’s availability or MAU tracking, we will make it right.
Anna will apply fair remediation, which may include extending the measurement window or applying reasonable, verified usage adjustments, so you are not penalized for things outside your control.
This remediation does not apply to outages or failures caused by:
- The App itself or the developer’s own infrastructure/configuration.
- Third-party APIs, model providers (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic), or external services outside Anna’s reasonable control.
- Expired credentials, missing API keys, or billing failures on the developer’s side.
- Violations of Anna policies or Program Rules.
12. Payment
- Payment Methods: Approved grants are paid in cash (USD or local equivalent) via Bank Wire Transfer, PayPal, Stripe, or other mutually agreed channels.
- Fees & Taxes: Developers are responsible for their own local tax reporting. Standard banking, currency exchange, or payment-processor transaction fees will be handled according to the rules of the selected payment channel.
13. What is an Anna OS App? (Porting Your Existing Assets)
An Anna App is a complete, user-facing product with an interactive UI and working backend logic.
Because Anna is an AI OS, we handle the heavy infrastructure for you—user accounts, secure sandboxed execution, persistent memory, LLM orchestration, and native UI components. Your primary responsibility is to package your core logic into a complete product experience.
You can easily adapt your existing technical assets into a qualifying Anna App:
- Scripts (Python/Node.js): Connect your CLI tools or local scripts to a user-facing UI with clear inputs, outputs, and error handling. Raw scripts alone do not qualify.
- AI Agents: Package your Agent’s backend reasoning into an interactive Marketplace app experience that users can easily run.
- MCP Servers: Integrate your MCP tools into a complete App with a clear user-facing use case. Publishing or connecting a bare MCP server alone does not qualify.
- Workflows & Prompts: Package raw prompts, extraction pipelines, or multi-agent workflows into a complete product rather than submitting raw templates.
- Existing SaaS/AI Products: Port your existing web tools into an “Anna Edition” that runs natively and independently inside our Marketplace.
Anna minimizes the boilerplate. You focus on building a complete, high-value App and growing real users.
14. The 6-Step Playbook
Register → Activate Dev Access → Build or Migrate → App Review → Publish → Grow
- Register: Create your Anna account at https://anna.partners.
- Activate Dev Access: Go to the Developer Console and activate your developer profile. Developer activation is now self-serve and instant — no manual approval required. Just verify your email, accept the Developer ToS, and you’re ready to build.
- Build or Migrate with Anna AI OS: Use Anna’s SDK, local runtime, and developer documentation to adapt your existing scripts, Agents, or MCP servers to run natively on the OS. We also provide AI-readable documentation https://staging.anna.partners/llms.txt, paste it into Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, or another AI coding assistant to help it understand the Anna development framework and generate your App structure and manifest.
- Submit for App Review: Submit your completed AI OS App through the Developer Console. Once our team verifies that it safely and effectively integrates with Anna’s cognitive stack, it will be approved for the Marketplace.
- Publish & Share: Once approved, launch your App on the Marketplace and grab your unique shareable link.
- Grow & Maintain: Share your App, drive organic traffic, and keep your product active to watch your monthly MAU climb!
15. Support Channels
1. Forum Developer Section (For Technical & SDK Bugs)
- Best for: Coding issues, SDK bugs, sandbox errors, or environment setups.
- How: Start a new thread in our Developer section. Our core engineers will jump in to debug with you.
2. This Thread (For Rules, Prizes & Logistics)
- Best for: Questions about challenge rules, MAU calculations, or deadlines.
- How: Simply leave a comment right below this post.
3. The Builder Discord (For Real-time Vibe & Team-up)
- Best for: General chat, brainstorming, finding co-founders, and casual networking.
- How: Join our Discord: [https://discord.gg/7ftTdsdMMz] and jump into the channels.
16. Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Does my App have to be available and runnable on Anna to qualify?
A: Yes. Simply linking to an external website or GitHub repository is not enough. The App must be fully functional and runnable through the Anna Marketplace.
Q: Do I have to build a completely new App?
A: Absolutely not! You can adapt an existing script, Agent, MCP server, workflow, open-source project, or SaaS product. As long as it is adapted into a functional Anna App, it qualifies.
Q: What happens after November 30, 2026?
A: November 30 is the deadline to qualify for our initial Founding Builder cohort. Once your App qualifies, its Founding Builder status remains associated with the App (unless disqualified under the Program Rules). The App will remain eligible for ongoing monthly grant evaluation under the applicable published rules. Monthly payments are not automatic or unconditional and depend on the App meeting that month’s MAU, availability, and maintenance guidelines.
Q: What happens if my App falls below 200 MAU?
A: You will not receive a grant for that month. However, your Founding status is preserved, and you can resume receiving standard grants as soon as your App crosses the 200 MAU line again in a future month (after the normal monthly verification and settlement process).
Q: What happens when my App moves into a higher MAU tier?
A: The App receives the Standard Monthly Grant corresponding to the highest tier reached during that calendar month. Tier rewards are non-cumulative, and moving to a higher tier in a later month does not unlock another Launch Boost.
Q: Can I advertise my App or offer users free access?
A: Yes. Normal marketing, creator partnerships, referrals, and free product access are fully allowed. However, traffic acquired primarily by paying or rewarding users to perform meaningless qualifying executions without genuine product utility may be excluded.
Q: When are monthly grants paid?
A: Approved grants are normally paid within 30 days after the end of the applicable measurement month, subject to MAU validation, anti-cheat review, identity verification, and payment compliance.
Q: Can I submit multiple Apps?
A: Yes, as long as they represent distinct use cases and provide genuine independent utility. Related, cloned, or split Apps will be aggregated or disqualified.
Q: Can one user count toward multiple Apps?
A: Yes, when they genuinely use different Apps. However, coordinated, forced, or reward-driven usage across related Apps will be discounted or excluded.
Q: How are revenue-sharing payments handled?
A: Revenue sharing is separate from the Builder Grant program. In addition to any grants you may qualify for, Builders can earn 70% of eligible usage profit when users run their Apps through Anna’s paid credit system. Earnings are calculated daily (T+1) and can be tracked and managed through the Earnings section in the Developer Console. Payout requests are available once your eligible balance reaches $50.
17. Get Started Now
- Create your Anna Account: https://anna.partners
- Activate Developer Access: Sign In - Anna
- Join the Builder Discord: Anna • AI
- Read the Docs: Build for Anna — Developer Hub
- Use the AI-Readable Developer Docs: https://staging.anna.partners/llms.txt Paste this URL into Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, or another AI coding assistant to help it understand the Anna development framework.
- Explore GitHub Examples: https://github.com/whtcjdtc2007/anna-executa-examples
- Step-by-Step Beginner’s Guide: From Zero to Your First Anna App
- Packaging Guide for Local Agents: Packaging Anna Executa as a Releasable Binary
Important Program Notice
The Founding Builder Grants are promotional ecosystem incentives. Participation in this program does not create an employment, salary, agency, partnership, joint venture, franchise, or independent-contractor relationship between Anna and any developer, team, or payment recipient. Anna may apply additional requirements where necessary to comply with applicable law, sanctions, tax rules, payment-provider requirements, safety policies, or Marketplace policies.
Build it. Publish it. Grow it.
Let’s see what happens when builders receive support beyond the demo. 