---
name: Donate semantics
description: How donations affect a request's collectedAmount and status in the EHSAN POC.
---

# Donate accounting & pipeline transition

On `POST /requests/:id/donate`, the server **adds** the donation to `collectedAmount`
(never overwrites it), clamps the applied amount to the remaining target, rejects
non-finite/non-positive amounts and cases that are not `published` / already funded.
A case only transitions out of `published` into the closed-loop pipeline (`donated`
→ delivered → … → whatsapp_sent → closed) once `collectedAmount >= requestedAmount`.

**Why:** opportunity cards show a crowdfunding-style progress bar with collected/remaining.
An earlier handler overwrote `collectedAmount` and force-advanced to `donated` on any
donation — fine when all published seeds started at 0, but it silently corrupted totals
and made partially funded cases vanish from `/requests/published` after one donation.

**How to apply:** keep at least one seed case nearly fully funded so the closed loop is
trivially demoable with a single preset donation. Frontend (`donate.tsx`) must also
validate finite/positive amounts and clamp to remaining before submitting.