The Mechanical Turk API, on a crowd someone answers for.

Change one line

Create an API key in the requester console, then set the endpoint. Requests are signed with AWS Signature Version 4, so boto3, the AWS CLI and the AWS SDKs work without changes. Use any region, the service name is mturk-requester.

import boto3

mturk = boto3.client(
    "mturk",
    region_name="us-east-1",
    endpoint_url="https://platform.a2zboard.com/mturk",
    aws_access_key_id="A2ZK...",
    aws_secret_access_key="...",
)

hit = mturk.create_hit(
    Title="Verify an invoice total",
    Description="Compare the draft with the image",
    Reward="0.12",
    MaxAssignments=2,
    LifetimeInSeconds=86400,
    AssignmentDurationInSeconds=600,
    Question=open("question.xml").read(),
)["HIT"]

Or with the AWS CLI

aws mturk get-account-balance \
  --endpoint-url https://platform.a2zboard.com/mturk \
  --region us-east-1

curl https://platform.a2zboard.com/mturk \
  --aws-sigv4 "aws:amz:us-east-1:mturk-requester" \
  --user "$A2Z_KEY_ID:$A2Z_SECRET" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.1" \
  -H "X-Amz-Target: MTurkRequesterServiceV20170117.GetAccountBalance" \
  -d '{}'

Sandbox keys are free and always show a balance of 10,000.00. Nobody is paid in the sandbox, and workers see sandbox HITs only when they switch on sandbox mode.

Notifications

Attach a notification to a HIT type with UpdateNotificationSettings. Events are batched, delivered at least once, retried with backoff and carry the standard document (Version 2014-08-15, EventDocId, Events).

• SQS: a queue URL. Allow the A2Z notifier to send with a queue policy.
• SNS: a topic ARN, with the same kind of policy.
• Email: an address.
• Webhook: an HTTPS URL. Each call is signed: X-A2Z-Signature carries a timestamp and an HMAC-SHA256 of the body with your workspace secret.

Event types: AssignmentAccepted, AssignmentAbandoned, AssignmentReturned, AssignmentSubmitted, AssignmentApproved, AssignmentRejected, HITCreated, HITExtended, HITReviewable, HITExpired, HITDisposed and Ping.

Money

Creating a HIT holds the reward plus the platform fee for every assignment. Approval spends the hold, rejection releases it, and unused assignments come back when the HIT expires. The fee is a single percentage of the reward, rounded to the cent, with a one cent minimum. There is no surcharge for large assignment counts.

Rewards are paid to workers by their partner organisation. A2Z settles with the partner, so you never handle payments to individuals.