8. Pay out

What you’ll do: Merge the PR. There is no separate “release” step — the automation does it.

Pre-merge checklist

The release only fires when every rule passes, so confirm these first:

The issue is a priced bounty (rewarded + tier, or manual with an amount).
A contributor is assigned and has connected a wallet (the milestone is locked on-chain).
The PR body links the issue: Closes #123 (or Fixes / Resolves).
The PR author is the assigned contributor.
The escrow still holds the reserved amount.

If the PR author is not the assigned contributor, the bot aborts the payout and comments to say so. The reward is only released to the assignee, verified live against GitHub at merge time.

Merge the PR

Review as usual

Your normal code review. TOSS doesn’t change how you review or what checks must pass.

Confirm the issue link

The PR body must contain Closes #<issue>. Without it, TOSS can’t match the PR to the bounty and nothing releases.

Merge

Use any merge strategy. GitHub fires the merge event and the automation re-checks every rule.

What happens next

Within seconds, a background worker:

Re-reads the PR and issue from GitHub (merged + closed + author matches).
Confirms the on-chain milestone exists, matches the amount, and targets the contributor’s current wallet.
Releases the USDC — applying your split if you saved one.
Comments the confirmation on the issue.

If it doesn’t release

It almost always does, but if a transient GitHub/Stellar error occurs, the worker retries with backoff on its own. The one thing you can do manually:

Comment on the bounty issue

@trustless-oss retry

↳ Re-runs the release checks now. Only works if the rules actually pass — it won't force a refused payout.

If it still won’t release, see the payout section of Troubleshooting.

Done when

The bot has commented that the payout released, and the contributor’s wallet shows the USDC.

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