Almost didn't do the take-home because it looked like unpaid work, then it turned into my offer

My recruiter mentioned a take-home and I almost said no, I'd read too many stories about six hour assignments that go nowhere. This one was capped at three hours, build a small feature against a mock API, and they said explicitly partial completion is fine, we want to see how you think. I spent maybe two and a half hours on it, left a comment in the code explaining what I'd do differently with more time instead of forcing it to look finished. The follow up call was just the two engineers who'd read my code walking through my decisions with me, no gotcha questions. Got the offer four days later. I think the cap and the honesty about scope made all the difference versus the last one I did.