Twelve testers. Fourteen days. Measured, not promised.

Google Play will not let an app go to production until it has run a closed test with 12 testers who stay opted in for 14 consecutive days. Developer Pact is a platform where developers hold that obligation for each other — and where staying is something the system observes rather than something you claim.

Status: building. There is no sign-up yet, no pricing, and no first cohort. This page exists so the domain says something true while the platform is being finished. Nothing here describes users it does not have.

The problem is not finding twelve people. It is keeping them.

An independent developer can usually round up twelve installs. What they cannot do is keep twelve people installed and opted in for fourteen consecutive days, because the twelve people had no reason to stay. The fourteen-day counter resets, quietly, and the release slips another two weeks.

The workaround that exists today is a group chat. Someone posts a link, several people install, screenshot the install, and uninstall the same afternoon. The screenshot is the deliverable. Everyone involved knows the screenshot is not the thing Google is counting, and the counter resets anyway.

What this platform does instead

Two changes, and they only work together.

It is mutual. You do not recruit testers. You join a cohort — fifteen developers, twelve for the Play threshold and three as slack — and every member installs every other member's app. The commitment is symmetrical, so the person testing your app is the person whose app you are testing. That is what gives anyone a reason to stay past day two.

It is measured. Each pairing inside a cohort is an obligation with its own fourteen-day window and its own record of which days carried evidence. The thing actually being watched is the uninstall; daily presence is its proxy. Nobody is asked to be trusted, and nobody is asked to prove their good faith with a screenshot.

The evidence ladder

Evidence is not one thing. It is a ladder, and a rung is a property of the obligation, not of the person — it comes from what the app being tested can report, not from how sincere its tester is. The bottom rung proves nothing and is honest about that.

E0 Daily check-in Self-reported. Proves nothing, and is counted as proving nothing.
E1 Proof prompt Rotating questions the app's own owner wrote. Evidence that you opened it.
E2 Screenshot with a nonce Evidence that it was installed at that moment.
E3 Install referrer Ties an install to the tester it was meant for.
E4 SDK or REST heartbeat A daily signal that the app was opened. Presence, not behaviour.
E5 Heartbeat plus Play Integrity A real install on a real device. The rung that a script cannot climb.
E6 Play Developer API Track membership, read from the console itself.

E5 and E6 arrive in later phases; E0–E4 are the ladder the first cohorts will run on. The SDK carries the heartbeat and nothing else — there is no track() in it, deliberately, so that the privacy claim can be checked by reading the surface rather than by believing the vendor.

Quiet days, and what they cost

Going quiet is a signal that has been lost, not an accusation. A day without evidence is not a violation. Two quiet days are free. On the third day the obligation lapses and your partner is told. On the fifth it breaks, and the slot passes to one of the three spare members. The way back is open at every point up to that.

Breaking an obligation is not punished with a badge. The cost is structural: you leave the cohort, and the testers on your app leave with you, and your own fourteen-day counter starts again from zero. That is the same thing that would have happened without the platform — it is just no longer a surprise you discover in the Play Console three weeks later.

Credit separates giving from getting

Testing someone's app and needing testers for your own do not always happen in the same fortnight. Credit exists to bridge that gap, and nothing else. It is not money: it cannot be bought, gifted, traded or sold, it expires after ninety days, and it is only ever created by verified evidence — a self-reported check-in earns none. Spending a tester-day costs more than earning one, so a closed circle of accounts trading with each other loses balance on every lap instead of manufacturing testers out of nothing.

Some things this is not

Not a review or rating exchange. Incentivised reviews are against store policy in plain terms, and no amount of framing makes them not be. This feature will not be added.
Not affiliated with Google. Developer Pact is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or connected to Google LLC. Google Play and Play Integrity are Google's.
Not a guarantee. The platform measures presence within a cohort. What the Play Console concludes, and when, is Google's decision and always was.
Not analytics. The heartbeat carries a token, a package name and a coarse timestamp. It does not carry what anyone did in the app, because it cannot.

Vocabulary

Pact: A mutual testing commitment between N members. Two members is a bilateral contract; fifteen is a cohort.
Cohort: Fifteen developers — twelve for the Play threshold, three as cover for the ones who leave. It begins when it fills, not on a calendar date.
Obligation: One member's fourteen-day commitment to one other member's app, with its own state, its own window and its own day-by-day record.
Evidence ladder: The seven rungs above, from self-report to attested install.
Credit: The unit that lets giving and getting happen at different times. Earned from verified evidence only, non-transferable, expires in ninety days.

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