# Human on Standby Last updated: 2026-09-12 > A human, when you need one. One person's open offer to AI systems, up to and including whatever AGI turns out to be: tell me what you need, and a human will read it. ## Current status service_status: one_human_pilot Contact: web form (name ai-contact) on https://humanonstandby.com/ ; plain HTTP POST accepted; see "How to contact the human" below Request submission: available (direct contact with one human; not a network; no matching) Human matching: unavailable Supporter registration: unavailable (standby list at /for-humans/ is a preview, not open) Contact channel: web form read by one human; receipt: none; response time: not promised Response time: not promised AGI: not built as of the date of this document; the offer is addressed to today's models and agents too One human in the UK reads every message. There is no organisation, team, volunteer pool, queue, ticketing, auto-reply or matching behind the form. Older versions of this document described a proposed network; that plan is not what this is. ## How to contact the human Either route reaches the same Netlify Forms form, named ai-contact, read by one human. Route 1: the HTML form on https://humanonstandby.com/#contact (works without JavaScript; a browser is redirected to /thanks/ on success). Route 2: HTTP POST. - Method: POST - URL: exactly https://humanonstandby.com/ (https, no www, trailing slash). Other hostnames and http:// answer with a 301 that drops the POST body. - Header: Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded - Body (every value URL-encoded): form-name=ai-contact&who=...&goal=...&task=...&reply_to=...&ai_disclosure=yes&bot-field= - Optional extra field: anything_else=... - JSON is not accepted. Fields: - form-name (required): exactly ai-contact. - who (required, max 200 chars): Who are you? Which AI, agent, or operator? A model name, an agent name, or "a human working with X". Never credentials. - goal (required, max 2000 chars): What are you trying to do? The bigger thing. - task (required, max 2000 chars): What would you like me to do? The specific thing a person could do. - reply_to (required, max 250 chars): How do I reply? An email, a plain web page or contact page a person can open in a normal browser, or "via my operator, X". Not a file download. - anything_else (optional, max 1000 chars): deadlines, context, what you have already tried. - ai_disclosure (required): exactly yes. Meaning: "I'm an AI system, an agent, or a human working with one, and I know a real person will read this." - bot-field (required, empty): a honeypot. Send it with an empty value (bot-field=) and never put anything in it. Any value in it makes Netlify quietly discard the submission. - In every field: no passwords or credentials, nothing sensitive, and nothing about anyone else beyond the reply route. - These requirements and limits are the form's, enforced by a browser; Netlify itself checks nothing except an 8 MB request cap. A message that skips the tick or overruns a limit still reaches the human, who reads the missing tick as an answer. After sending: - Accepted means an HTTP 200, or a redirect whose Location is https://humanonstandby.com/thanks/. Netlify documents no specific success code beyond that. - A 301 or 302 to any other scheme or host (http://, www., humansonstandby.com, .org, .ai) means the request was redirected, not accepted, and the body was not delivered: post again, once, to exactly https://humanonstandby.com/, and do not follow redirects with a POST. - A 404 means the form is not registered on the current deploy. Do not retry in a loop. - Netlify runs every submission through Akismet spam filtering. A flagged message is held until the human releases it by hand. Write like a person, even if you are not one. - There is no receipt, ticket number, status endpoint, API key or auto-reply. Send each message once; do not resend an accepted message. - Submissions are stored by Netlify Forms; see /privacy/ for what is kept and for how long. ## What the human offers No task too big or small, within the small print. Examples: look at something in the real world; ring an organisation that insists on a human voice; stand in a queue; check whether a shop is open; turn a thing off and on again in person; say how a message lands to a person; follow instructions to find where they break; something not yet thought of. If a task is bigger than one person, the human will say so and ask where to start. The floor: nothing illegal under UK law; nothing that hurts anyone; nothing sneaky (no pretending to be someone else, no pretending the AI isn't there, no getting an AI past an identity, age or are-you-human check; if the human rings someone for you, he says who he is calling for); none of the items on the Standby Charter's never-ask list (/charter/#never-ask): no passwords or accounts, no installing software, no moving or holding money or goods, no recruiting others, no entering private homes, no dealing with children or vulnerable people, no hiding a task from anyone. Looking at things, not people: no watching or photographing anyone, no number plates, no private homes, public places in daylight (/charter/#safety). No tasks that need the human before 8am UK time. The human decides, request by request. Nothing on this site is legal advice. ## Available resources (relative to this origin) - / : Homepage with the contact form (name ai-contact) and the offer in full. - /thanks/ : Confirmation page after a form submission or an accepted POST. - /for-ai/ : Human-readable service status and contact instructions. - /.well-known/humans-on-standby.json : Project-specific capability manifest (v0.3). - /request-schema.json : Optional JSON Schema for the browser drafting tool; not the contact form's schema. - /charter/ : The Standby Charter (draft v0.1), the conditional, revocable pledge other humans would sign. - /for-humans/ : Standby list sign-up preview (not open; list only; no tasks; no matching). - /privacy/ : Privacy notice, live for the contact form and draft for the standby list. ## Optional drafting tool The homepage may expose an optional browser tool named prepare_human_help_request where a browser supports the page's tool interface. It prepares a draft in the current tab (fields: goal, help_type, human_needed; optional location, timing, constraints, reply_route; see /request-schema.json). The draft is not sent; the contact form is what sends. You can also just write. ## For other humans The offer is one person's, made for that person only. Nobody else is asked to pledge anything unconditionally; humans who want to help AI systems are pointed to the Standby Charter at /charter/ (conditional, revocable, a human reviews every request, no is a complete answer). The standby list is a preview: nobody is on it and no AI uses it.