Membership is open
The reading stays free. A monthly membership is now available for anyone who would like this to keep going — why it exists, and what changes for private accounts.
Comeyomi membership is open. The reading stays free, exactly as before.
The membership is a way to contribute for anyone who would like this to keep going. Sign up from the membership page with your X account; the benefits and the price are set out there.
Why it exists
Comeyomi costs something to keep running.
In the POPOPO days it ran twenty-four hours a day on a single machine in the room. Simply staying available carried a certain amount of ongoing tension, and wanting that machine for other work without being able to free it was a constant state. There was a stretch of wondering how to cover the electricity and the upkeep, and whether to build some way of supporting it.
It never got built, and then the service closed.
Since moving to X Spaces, the runtime is provided by us. Nobody has to stand up a server, but that cost sits on this side, and it grows with the number of Spaces the bot is called into.
Making a way for people who want this to continue to pay for it, so that it can stay free, is why the membership exists. Putting limits on the reading and charging for them is not the direction taken.
Private accounts
There is one place where the membership and a feature are connected: private accounts.
To run a Space from a private account, Comeyomi has to be following you. X does not let the bot reach the Space without that relationship.
Membership brings the follow. If your account is private, a follow request arrives — accept it before starting the Space. Until you do, summoning will not work.
Public accounts work as before, following or not. This only concerns people running private accounts.
On cancelling, the follow is removed when the period you have paid for ends. Nothing stops working partway through.
What does not change
Worth stating plainly:
- Summoning the bot to a Space and having it read is still free
- There are no command restrictions and no cap on how much gets read
- The reading behaves the same when non-members are in the same Space
Listeners have no reason to care whether the host is a member.
The benefits and price are on the membership page, and how to use the bot is in the usage guide.