About Yubikiri

Yubikiri is for artists and clients who want the commission to feel personal without leaving the important parts to memory. The brief, accepted terms, WIPs, approvals, revision count, deadline, and delivery stay together.

Yubikiri starts after a client has already hired you. There is no checkout button on your page and no cut taken from your work. If you turn on staged payments, clients pay through Stripe and the payout lands in your account. The room is there to settle questions, not to hover while you draw.

What this is for

Commissions run on trust and memory, and memory loses. The brief was in one DM, the deadline in another, the “sure, one more small change” in a third. Yubikiri puts the agreement, the WIPs, the approvals, and the revision count in one room both of you can see — so when a question comes up six weeks later, nobody's scrolling.

If you connect Stripe, the money goes straight to you.

Made by hand, kept by promise

Yubikiri means pinky promise. That idea shapes the product: say what the work is, agree before it starts, and keep the record when memory gets fuzzy. Every commission, kept.

The same promise applies to the art. Generative AI artwork cannot be sold or delivered through Yubikiri. Artists sign a human-made pledge. Community reports are reviewed by people before action is taken. A pledge is a promise kept by people, and that is what the mark records.

Built for working artists

• Receipts beat claims. Accepted terms, approvals, revisions, and deadline changes belong in the record.
• Boundaries are kind. Visible revision limits protect artists and clients alike.
• Art stays human. The policy is a pledge backed by reporting and review, not a technical detection claim.

Built in the open

The people marked with a gold Builder mark build and maintain Yubikiri. The public feedback board shows suggestions and issues, their votes, and whether each item is open, planned, or shipped. You can read it without an account. Sign in to add your own or vote.

That's what “You asked. We built it.” means here. There is a visible path from request to release. No invented community numbers. No roadmap hidden behind a launch page. What actually went live is listed on What's new.

From the builder

Portfolio

Hi, my name is Emmanuel. I'm an illustrator and graphic designer, an anime fan, and the creator and designer of Yubikiri. I work out of the United States.

After college, the hardest part of going professional wasn't the drawing. It was everything around it: finding commission work, and learning to talk to clients like a business when the only client I'd ever really had was myself. That's a big shift. At some point I had to face the fact that I needed this to put food on the table.

The longer I spent in the art world, the more I noticed that the things going wrong between artists and clients were almost never about talent. They were about trust, and about how little of it ever gets written down. Terms live in DMs. Nobody's sure what was agreed, what's owed, or when. Generative AI hasn't made that better. It's handed both sides one more thing to be unsure about.

So I built Yubikiri. The name comes from 指切り, the Japanese pinky promise. It turns a commission into something written down: you and your client agree on the work up front, break it into milestones with a price on each one, and payment follows the milestones instead of one handshake at the end.

It's built for both sides of the table. If you're an artist, you should know what you agreed to, what's owed, and when. If you're commissioning art for the first time, you shouldn't have to guess how any of this works, or wonder whether you're being difficult by asking.

I'll be straight about how it was made. I designed Yubikiri, directed it, reviewed every decision, and decide what ships. AI assists with the software. It has never made a single piece of art on this platform, and it can't. The illustration, branding, and visual design you see here, including this page, are mine. The art is the livelihood Yubikiri exists to protect, and that's exactly why generative AI artwork can't be sold or delivered here.

Thank you to everyone who tested the beta. If something's broken or confusing, tell me: hello@yubikiri.art. I'd rather hear it than not.

Happy creating.

Manny
Yubi Dev

What exists today

Commission rooms and artist pages are currently free. Artists can create a public page, show commission options and availability, and invite a client into one shared room. Both people see the same agreement, deadline, stages, feedback, approvals, revision count, and delivery. Optional Stripe payments go directly to the artist.

When work is complete, Yubikiri can seal the process into a Keepsake. Each final gets a file id, and artists can show a Keepsake Seal on their portfolio. Artists can also use solo work to record personal or portfolio work without a client room. Sealing one is free, with no monthly limit. Anyone can check these records for free at /verify.

Other working tools include reusable terms and menus, private reference libraries, change orders, extra revisions, rush options, public queues, collaborators, VTuber launch pipelines, EN/JA comments, downloadable room archives, making-of pages, notifications, and bookkeeping exports. These tools document and organize the work. What each record does and does not show is set out in Disclaimers.

Questions? Contact us

Founding program

Yubikiri is open now. Anyone can create an artist page and run real commission rooms. The Founding mark is separate: invite-only for the first 100 artists, curated by staff. Joining the waitlist does not grant the mark automatically.

Want to be considered? Leave your email below. You can still create your artist page without joining.