Perhaps the best examples for that category are LightSail, the Bill Nye-helmed campaign that brought Carl Sagan’s “solar sailer” to life, and the Oculus VR headset. Oculus raised $2.4 million on the platform, which is impressive, but what the campaign really did for the team is bring it to Facebook’s attention — the social network ended up buying Oculus for a cool $2 billion. There’s also OpenROV, the underwater drone that raised over $800,000 on the platform.

In addition to technologies that push the limits, the team is also looking for campaigns featuring tools that can help bring other people’s projects to life. A couple of good examples are Particle’s electron board that people can use to make IoT devices and Artiphon’s Instrument 1, which can function as several types of musical instruments. Finally, they’re also looking for campaigns that feature avant-garde designs, such as Lumos the next-gen bicycle helmet and a shapeshifting modern lamp called Lumio.

Kickstarter says it decided to publish its request, because it was inspired by Y Combinator’s call for startups. It’s also part of staying true to its promise to support arts and creativity as a public benefit corporation, which was also the reason why the company hosted a special STEM event for kids last year. So, what can you expect if your project fits any of the three categories Kickstarter is looking for? The company says it will work with you one-on-one to help make your campaign shine and “spotlight it for [its] community of 13 million backers.”

You can’t be hanging around in the world of crowdfunding for as long as Kickstarter without spotting a few trends here and there. Taking a leaf out of Y Combinator’s Request for Startups, the crowdfunding site is highlighting what it thinks are opportunities in the coming year. While Kickstarter’s goals are significantly more fuzzy than Y Combinator’s, it sends a clear signal to potential campaigns, hinting what Kickstarter will throw its not inconsiderable weight behind.

The crowdfunding site specifically identifies “Tools for Creating.” The category, Kickstarter says, includes both literal creation tools, such as Wazer, which was launched at TechCrunch Disrupt last year, and more a more liberal take on creation, such as Artiphon’s Instrument 1.

The two other topics of focus are even less helpful, and include “Boundary Pushers” and “Delightful Design,” which, frankly, could mean anything. It’s not entirely clear what it is that Kickstarter is trying to achieve by posting the request for projects, especially without clear goals attached. One could argue that all crowdfunding campaigns should be pushing boundaries and be well-designed.

What is interesting, however, is that this appears to signal a shift away from some of Kickstarter’s other stated goals: For the past few years, the site seems to have been focusing on artistic and creative projects over technology-heavy projects. Taking its eyes off the ball means that the company’s arch-rival Indiegogo threatened to become the default go-to site for a lot of hardware  and tech-related projects. It’s good to see Kickstarter get back into the race and actually start promoting its internal teams that are working with creators to build successful crowdfunded projects.

Personally, I’d love to see the criteria spelled out more explicitly (we are seeking X and Y, but not A and B), but I suppose any initiative has to start somewhere. Kickstarter’s initial volley might be a bit wooly, but if there’s one thing the company has consistently been getting right, it’s taking feedback and iterating quickly, so I’m excited to see where the Request for Projects might evolve.

PicoBrew has been around for a while, making beer brewing easy, even for people who don’t know the difference between hops and hops. The company’s current Kickstarter campaign is for the Pico C, a small home brewing appliance to make brewing even easier, using a Nespresso-style cartridge approach to making your own home brews. Today, the company announced a surprise upgrade option to its campaign — a whole new appliance. The PicoStill is a small still to make hard liquor from the beer you made with the Pico C. I’m not sure these types of surprises are a great idea.

On the topic of moonshine, I should point out that the company (wisely) doesn’t suggest you go and brew your own gin right off the bat. “PicoStill can be used to distill hop oil, water, and essential oils. Licensed and properly permitted craft distillers can also use the PicoStill to produce a wide range of alcohols, including vodka, whiskey, bourbon, moonshine, gin, brandies, schnapps and more.” Can you hear the “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” in that sentence, right around where it says “licensed and properly permitted craft distillers”? Yeah, me too.

Anyway. As exciting as it is to spring a whole additional piece of kit on your backers, I’m not going to lie: I really hope that this isn’t the start of a trend. Hardware startups are hard (I should know…), and scaling hardware manufacturing is an art in itself. We’ve seen many of the most popular hardware crowdfunding campaigns crumble under their own weight (ahem, we’re looking at you, Coolest Cooler), not least because they added layers and layers of complexity to a product as so-called “stretch goals.” Adding a whole new piece of equipment to the mix is brave, to put it mildly.

Don’t get me wrong; PicoBrew is an excellent company, and they’ve successfully delivered on promises in the past. There’s nothing that makes me think that it won’t deliver this time, too. I further admit that a $479 brewing machine/still early-bird kit is causing my finger to hover over the “pledge now” button. The thought of having a home brewery and still in my own home is so unbearably cool that I barely know what to do myself. Of course, that’s exactly what marketing is meant to do (It worked! Congratulations.)

Having said that: Surprising backers with major changes halfway through a campaign makes it much harder to do due diligence. Whenever you back a campaign on any crowdfunding campaign, you should ask yourself, “Do the promises a company is making about a product make sense? Do I have faith in their ability to deliver?” The answer to that question could change significantly if the campaign changes the goalposts halfway through, and makes it much harder to be a diligent crowdfunding backer.

PicoStill is available now to Kickstarter backers for $170, or packaged with the Pico Model C for $479. It will retail for $349 when it hits stores later this fall.