Tornevall Networks Tools and Social Media Tools have grown far beyond a small internal toolbox.
What started as practical helper systems for day-to-day work now includes public documentation, RSS workflows, DNS and DNSBL tooling, SocialGPT, ToolGPT/X bot flows, browser automation, Whisper transcription, mail-support flows, vBulletin onboarding, VirtualBox management, and a growing collection of smaller operator tools around moderation, trust, and automation.
That growth is useful, but it is no longer cheap.
The public support page lives on Ko-fi:
If you want the short version, that page is the place to support the project directly. This documentation page exists to explain what the support is for, what already exists today, and what the different membership levels are meant to represent.
This project is not an empty roadmap asking for money before anything has been built.
There is already a substantial working platform behind it: public RSS and documentation surfaces, DNS and DNSBL tools, SocialGPT and related moderation helpers, ToolGPT/X bot flows, browser automation, transcription through Whisper, support-mail automation, account/onboarding systems, and a long tail of admin/operator utilities that keep the whole platform usable.
Some parts are public, some are permission-gated, and some are still clearly internal/admin-facing. But they all share the same reality: one growing platform with real maintenance cost, real hosting cost, real documentation work, and real development time behind it.
The expensive part is no longer only "one server and some spare time".
Tools now depends on a mix of ordinary hosting cost and usage-driven cost. OpenAI/API calls, web-search-backed verification, transcription, browser automation, storage, mail handling, monitoring, and security work all add up. Even features that look simple from the outside often rely on several moving parts behind the scenes.
The platform also takes time to document properly. The more public-facing it becomes, the more important it is that the docs stay clear, current, and honest about what is stable, what is experimental, and what is still growing.
Support helps keep that work moving without forcing the whole project to be limited to what can be paid privately out of pocket.
The long-term direction can be described as Trustpilot for Social Media.
That does not mean a people-rating database and it does not mean surveillance.
The idea is an independent toolkit around social media trust signals: fact-check assistance, moderation support, audit trails, context gathering, verification helpers, and operator tools that make public claims and moderation work easier to inspect and reason about.
That is the direction the project is moving toward, while still remaining grounded in the practical systems that already exist today.
Support helps the platform exist and improve. It does not buy unsafe access.
Support does not include admin access, private user data, moderation decisions, unrestricted API usage, raw secrets, DNS provider credentials, private keys, private system prompts, or shell access to production systems. If supporter features are added, they still need to stay safe, supportable, and fair to the rest of the platform.
The current Ko-fi structure is intentionally simple.
Nano Member is the low-threshold way to say "keep going".
It is not presented as a level that carries the whole platform by itself. It is the level for people who want to help with the baseline cost of hosting, maintenance, and documentation without pretending that a small contribution somehow covers the full technical stack.
Member is the first level meant to feel like steady recurring support rather than a one-off tip.
This level sits around half of the current baseline monthly server cost, before the more usage-driven AI and automation costs are counted. It is the level for people who actively want to help the platform stay alive and continue growing in a practical way.
Supporter is the first level that roughly maps to a real month of today's baseline infrastructure cost.
At this point the support starts to create actual breathing room, not just symbolic encouragement. It helps absorb the cost of keeping the project online while the more advanced AI-, search-, and automation-heavy features continue to expand.
Tools Backer is for people who want to support more than basic hosting.
This level is aimed at the broader platform burden: API capacity, documentation, maintenance time, browser automation, AI-assisted analysis, and the growing set of support and operator flows that make the platform useful in practice.
Super Member is the broadest recurring supporter level.
This is the tier for people who genuinely want to carry a noticeable part of the expensive side of the platform: AI usage, web-search-backed verification, transcription workflows, browser automation, moderation helpers, and the time needed to keep all of it coherent.
Infrastructure Sponsor is the serious sponsorship level.
This is the level for people, teams, or organizations that want to help fund servers, storage, AI/API usage, DNS-related tooling, security work, and the longer-term growth of the platform in a way that actually changes what can be maintained and built.
The table below documents how much of each monthly membership tier is internally reserved for OpenAI/API-backed usage inside Tornevall Networks Tools.
| Tier | Monthly price | AI Budget | Project support | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nano Member | €15 | €0 | €15 | Pure support tier. No included AI budget. |
| Member | €35 | €5 | €30 | Small internal AI/API reserve for basic Tools AI usage where available. |
| Supporter | €75 | €10 | €65 | Standard internal AI/API reserve for ordinary supporter-level SocialGPT, fact-check and moderation workflows. |
| Tools Backer | €150 | €25 | €125 | Larger internal AI/API reserve for OpenAI-backed workflows, web-search-assisted checks and selected supporter tools. |
| Super Member | €500 | €100 | €400 | High internal AI/API reserve for heavier Tools AI use, prompt-pack workflows and broader supporter/dev-site usage. |
| Infrastructure Sponsor | €2000 | €300 | €1700 | Sponsor-level AI/API reserve while most of the tier still supports infrastructure, servers, documentation, DNS/Let's Encrypt tooling, selected repository access and development. |
AI Budget means an internal monthly reserve for OpenAI/API-backed usage inside Tornevall Networks Tools. It is not direct OpenAI account access, not an API key, and not unlimited usage. Tools may enforce fair-use limits, feature permissions, model limits, abuse prevention and availability rules.
Unused AI Budget is not paid out, transferred, refunded, or treated as stored credit unless a separate policy explicitly says otherwise. The budget is an internal allocation model for operating the service.
Ko-fi tipping can also be used as a manual top-up path for internal Tools AI reserve when that flow is offered. In that case the tip is explicitly treated as support for OpenAI/API-backed usage inside Tools, not as direct OpenAI access, not as an API key, and not as unrestricted usage.
The current baseline server cost is roughly in the €70–75/month range before OpenAI usage, web search, transcription, browser automation, and development time are counted.
That is why the levels are framed the way they are:
The point is not to pretend the numbers are magically precise. The point is to be honest that the platform now has real running cost and that the more advanced features make that cost less predictable than a static hosting bill.
Support makes it easier to keep the existing systems stable, document the platform properly, and continue building the parts that still need more time and polish.
That includes public docs, safer rollout of supporter-safe features, better reliability around AI-heavy workflows, and a healthier path forward for the bigger social-media trust and moderation direction.
If the project is useful to you, the most direct place to help is here:
If you are unsure which level makes sense, the practical interpretation is simple:
The goal is not to build hype around a vague future product.
The goal is to keep a real, already-growing platform healthy enough to continue evolving — and to do that in a way that stays technically honest, well documented, and useful.