Get paid while you code.

Kickbacks sells the little "thinking…" word inside the Claude Code & Codex spinners — and pays up to 50% of ad revenue back to you, the developer whose machine showed it.

When Claude Code or Codex is thinking, it shows a random verb — "Discombobulating…", "Baking…", "Percolating…". Cute, but it's prime real estate doing nothing.

Kickbacks turns that one line into a tiny, tasteful, clickable sponsored slot. Advertisers bid for it in an open auction. You get up to 50% of ad revenue — credited automatically, per impression and per click.

- ✶ Discombobulating… (esc to interrupt)
+ ✶ Linear — issue tracking that's actually fast ↗ (esc to interrupt)

No surveys. No crypto. No "watch this video." You just… keep coding, and your balance ticks up in the status bar:

Kickbacks  ($0.42 today · $7.11)

• Advertisers buy blocks. One block = 1,000 five-second impressions. They set a price per block and an ad creative, then buy as many blocks as they want.
• An English-ascending auction decides whose ad shows where, and when.
• Revenue share. Up to 50% of ad revenue accrues to the developer whose editor rendered the ad. Clicks are worth 50× an impression.
• Real-time balance. Today / this month / lifetime, right in your VS Code status bar, with a full ledger at kickbacks.ai.

Four surfaces, one extension:

VS Code surfaces work on local, Remote-SSH, devcontainers, and code-server. Older CLIs just keep their stock verbs — nothing breaks.

1. Search Kickbacks in the VS Code Marketplace and install.
2. Click Kickbacks: Sign in in the status bar.
3. Authenticate with Google.
4. Keep coding. Earnings start automatically.

→ Get it on the VS Code Marketplace

You're buying attention from the most technical audience on earth, in the calmest possible format — a single line, while they wait. Set your bid, drop in a creative, and you're live.

→ Buy inventory at kickbacks.ai

This is a public, read-only mirror of the Kickbacks VS Code extension — the client that renders the ads and tracks impressions. It's published for transparency: you can read exactly what runs on your machine.

src/
  adapters/        per-tool injection (claude-code, codex, claude-cli, codex-cli)
  activation/      lifecycle: ad rotation, self-update, status bar, injection
  auth/            sign-in + OS-keychain-sealed token vault
  metrics/         impression / view-threshold / click telemetry (idempotent)
  viewTracking/    "was it actually on screen long enough?" timer
  killswitch/      server-controlled global off-switch
media/             logos + icons
test/              the vitest suite that guards editor safety

The backend, advertiser portal, auction engine, and marketing site live in a separate private repository.

npm install
npm run build       # esbuild → dist/
npm test            # vitest — the editor-safety net
npm run package     # produce the .vsix

Proprietary and source-available — not open source. © 2026 ShiftKeys, Inc. All rights reserved. You may read this code; you may not use, copy, modify, distribute, or commercialize it without a written license. See LICENSE. Commercial inquiries: support@kickbacks.ai.