Get paid for waiting.

We turned “Discombobulating…” into an ad marketplace. 70% of net ad revenue goes to you.

Kickbacks  ($0.42 today · $7.11)

Works best inside the VS Code & IDE extensions of Claude Code & Codex — the terminal CLI works too. Apologies, terminal jockeys.

Top Earning Users

Public, anonymized earners ranked by credited lifetime earnings. Hours and hourly rate come from billable credited ad-display time; names and emails never appear here.

#UserLifetime EarningsAvg $/hrHours Worked
1Developer 89RGVK$0.79$0.501.57
2Developer 8A74ET$0.79$2.060.38
3Developer 89CWE7$0.60$0.531.13
4Developer 8ABCYT$0.56$0.501.12
5Developer 894GGE$0.55$2.520.22
6Developer 8ASF07$0.44$0.500.87
7Developer 89T2NR$0.31$0.500.61
8Developer 89XN9M$0.27$1.240.22
9Developer 89CZWA$0.26$0.500.51
10Developer 8B1JFR$0.22$2.520.09

Bid market

Every paid campaign, ranked by bid. Higher bids serve first; blocks are 1,000 impressions; a click bills as 50.

Top bid / 1k imps
Queue depth
0
Developer share
70%
Imps/min across the fleet
0.0

Showing market history for the last 24 hours. Chart, fleet pace, and warmup context use the selected window.

#CampaignBid / 1K impressionsImpressionsStatus
1Ramp$12.001.2k / 1kexhausted
2Feast$5.003.3k / 2kexhausted
3DormantFile$5.001k / 1kexhausted
4Anonymous advertiser$1.005k / 5kexhausted
5Anonymous advertiser$1.006k / 6kexhausted

Market price · 24H

Market history accrues hourly from live bidding — the price chart appears once the auction has a few hours of data in the 24H window.

How the money works

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

1,000

Advertisers buy blocks

One block is 1,000 five-second impressions. Advertisers set a price per block and a creative, then buy as many as they want.

An open auction decides

An English-ascending auction picks whose ad shows where, and when. Prime slots cost more.

70%

You get the developer share

70% of net ad revenue accrues to the developer whose editor rendered the ad — credited per impression and per click. The exact definition lives in the terms.

50×

Clicks pay more

A click is worth 50 impressions. Cash out from the payout portal once you cross the $10 minimum and complete Stripe payout setup.

Where the ad shows up

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.

SurfaceWhereNeeds
Spinner overlayClaude Code VS Code panelA compatible extension build
Thinking-shimmerCodex VS Code panelA compatible extension build
Status-bar lineClaude Code terminal CLIAny Claude Code version
Spinner verbClaude Code terminal CLIClaude Code 2.1.143+

Install in four steps

The Marketplace path is the default. If your environment blocks Marketplace installs, the install page includes a direct VSIX download.

  1. Search Kickbacks in the VS Code Marketplace and install kickbacks.kickbacks-dev.
  2. Click Kickbacks: Sign in in the status bar.
  3. Authenticate with Google, GitHub, or Apple.
  4. Keep coding. Earnings start automatically — cash out at kickbacks.dev/me after completing Stripe payout setup.