@adtention/sdk

Publisher SDK for ADtention. Show one sponsored line in your app's wait states (a coding-agent status line, a CLI spinner, a terminal idle moment) and earn a revshare. The sponsored line is plain text. Only a category tag and an opaque per-user token ever leave your process.

• Terminal-safe. Sponsor text is stripped of ANSI and control bytes before you ever see it. No escape injection, no log injection.
• Idempotent. Every serve carries a nonce, so retries never double-count.
• Multi-tenant. One publisher account, many end users, each rate-limited independently.
• Universal. The core uses only fetch and Web Crypto, so it runs on Node 20+, Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun, and browsers. A file-backed identity store for Node lives at @adtention/sdk/node.

npm install @adtention/sdk

Two ways to earn

You choose who collects the revshare:

• You keep it (default). Your project holds one publisher_id, and every sponsored line shown across all your users credits that one account. This is what most integrators do, and it's what the rest of this guide assumes.
• You pass it through to your users. The tool registers a separate publisher_id per install, so each user collects their own revshare. This is the model the ADtention status-line plugin uses. See Alternative model.

Who this is for

You're a developer tool: a CLI, an editor extension, a terminal, a coding agent, an OSS project. You want to show a sponsor line to your users and earn the revshare yourself (the project earns, not the end user). You sign up once to receive a publisher_id, and every sponsored line shown across all your users is credited to your account.

There are two shapes, and the SDK handles both:

| | Server-backed app | Locally-installed tool | |---|---|---| | e.g. | hosted agent, web IDE, SaaS dev tool | CLI, editor extension, terminal | | identity | your backend holds one publisher_id | embed your public publisher_id in the build | | who is subject | each end user (hash their user id) | each install/machine (a random stored id) | | the secret | stays in your backend | stays with you, used only to withdraw |

publisher_id is public, secret is private. Serving a sponsored line needs only the publisher_id, so it's safe to ship in a distributed binary or an OSS repo. The secret is needed only to bind a payout destination and withdraw, so keep it out of anything you distribute.

Get a publisher account

Before you can serve, you need a publisher_id. Create one in the ADtention portal: you pick a client name for your tool, and it gives you your publisher_id and your payout setup. The client name is linked to your publisher_id server-side and used to roll up your traffic — you never pass it from code. This is a one-time step for you. Your end users never register.

Then wire it in:

• Hosted app: put publisherId in your backend env (e.g. ADTENTION_PUBLISHER_ID).
• Distributed tool: embed publisherId as a public constant in your build.

Provisioning is separate from serving. Creating the account is a one-time step in the portal. The thing you deploy should serve only: pass serveOnly: true so it requires the provisioned publisherId and can never call register(). That keeps account creation in one place, so the embed won't create a stray account.

const slot = new SponsorSlot({ publisherId: 'pub_your_id', serveOnly: true, category: 'devops' });

To get paid, add a payout destination in the portal and withdraw once you pass the $10 threshold.

Quick start

High-level: a sponsor slot in your wait state

SponsorSlot is the high-level path. It rate-limits per end user (so you can call it on every render), caches the last served sponsored line, and never throws into your UI.

import { SponsorSlot, hashSubject } from '@adtention/sdk';

const slot = new SponsorSlot({
  publisherId: 'pub_your_id',   // your earning account (public)
  category: 'devops',           // your app's niche; omit for 'general'
});

// In your render loop / wait state, per end user:
const subject = await hashSubject(currentUserId); // opaque, PII-free
const ad = await slot.next({ subject });
if (ad) {
  render(`${ad.text}  -> ${ad.clickUrl}`); // ad.text is already terminal-safe
}

slot.next() only hits the network once per ~15s per subject (the server's dwell window). In between it returns the cached line. A transient error returns the last ad (or null), never throws.

Low-level: the typed client

AdtentionClient is a thin, typed wrapper over the v1 API for when you want full control.

import { AdtentionClient } from '@adtention/sdk';

const client = new AdtentionClient({ publisherId: 'pub_your_id' });

const ad = await client.serve({ category: 'web', subject });
// ad.text is sanitized; ad.clickUrl is absolute and http(s)-only
console.log(ad.text, ad.billable, ad.credit);

// Record a click (engagement only, never billed) and get the destination to open:
const dest = await client.recordClick(ad.impressionId);

// Check earnings (account-level: the project's running balance, for your own dashboard):
const bal = await client.balance();
console.log(bal.balanceUsd, bal.payable);

A distributed CLI/extension (project earns)

Same model as above, but the publisher_id is a public constant baked into your build, and each install gets a stable random subject so users are rate-limited independently. All credit pools into your one account.

import { SponsorSlot } from '@adtention/sdk';

const ADTENTION_PUBLISHER_ID = 'pub_your_id'; // public, safe to commit/ship

const slot = new SponsorSlot({ publisherId: ADTENTION_PUBLISHER_ID, category: 'devops' });
const subject = getOrCreateMachineId(); // a random id you persist once per install (e.g. crypto.randomUUID)
const ad = await slot.next({ subject });
if (ad) console.log(ad.text);

Alternative model: let each user earn for themselves

The models above all have you (the project) earn. If instead you want each end user to earn their own revshare (the model the ADtention status-line plugins for Claude Code and OpenCode use), let the tool self-register a separate publisher_id per install and persist it. On Node, use the file-backed store: the slot registers once, reuses it forever, and self-heals if the server forgets the account. Here you do not pass a subject, because each install is already its own publisher.

import { SponsorSlot } from '@adtention/sdk';
import { FileIdentityStore } from '@adtention/sdk/node';
import { homedir } from 'node:os';
import { join } from 'node:path';

const slot = new SponsorSlot({
  identityStore: new FileIdentityStore(join(homedir(), '.myapp', 'adtention.json')),
  category: 'systems',
  ref: process.env.MYAPP_ADTENTION_REF, // optional referral code, attributed on first register
});

const ad = await slot.next(); // no subject: this install IS the publisher

Self-registration (and self-heal) happens only when you provide an identityStore. If you pass a fixed publisherId, the SDK never silently mints a new account, which would otherwise orphan your earnings.

Categories

The six categories are the targeting enum. Import the type and your editor autocompletes the values:

import type { Category } from '@adtention/sdk';
// 'web3' | 'web' | 'devops' | 'data' | 'systems' | 'general'

You don't have to set a category:

• Do nothing. It defaults to general, which always fills from broad/run-of-network ads. You still earn.
• Set it once. Most tools have a fixed niche (a Solidity tool is always web3). One line.
• Classify text you already have. The optional classify() and classifyFiles() helpers port the reference client's keyword/file heuristics and run entirely on your side:

import { classify, classifyFiles } from '@adtention/sdk';
classify('we set up docker and a ci/cd pipeline');     // 'devops'
classifyFiles(['foundry.toml', 'package.json']);       // 'web3'  (priority order)

Getting the category right earns more (targeted campaigns bid higher), but it's optional.

subject: per-end-user scoping

Pass an opaque subject so the server scopes its rate limits (a billable impression at most once per ~15s, plus a daily cap) per end user instead of per account. Without it, all your users share one account-wide limit, which is fine for a single-user CLI but broken for an app with many users.

• Make it opaque: a random per-install id, or hashSubject(userId). Never raw PII.
• Make it stable per user and distinct between users.
• hashSubject(raw, { salt: 'my-app' }) keeps the same user uncorrelatable across apps.

All credit from every subject accrues to your one publisher_id.

What leaves your process

Per serve: publisher_id, the category tag, the opaque subject, and a nonce. That's it. Never code, file contents, prompt text, paths, repo names, or transcripts.

API reference

new AdtentionClient(options)

{ publisherId?, secret?, serveOnly?, apiBase?, timeoutMs?, fetch? }. apiBase defaults to https://api.adtention.ai.

• serveOnly: lock the client to serving only. Requires a publisherId (throws without one) and makes register() throw. Use it in a distributed embed whose publisherId is provisioned out of band, so the embed can never create a new account.

• register({ ref?, kind? }) returns { publisherId, secret, referralCode } and adopts the identity.

• serve({ category?, subject?, nonce? }) returns a ServeResult (sanitized text, absolute clickUrl, billable, credit, dedup).

• balance(publisherId?) returns a BalanceResult (account-level earnings, for the project's own dashboard, not the end-user render).

• recordClick(impressionId) returns the destination URL as string | null (Node/CLI; in a browser, navigate to ad.clickUrl directly and let the browser follow the 302).

• resolveClickUrl(clickUrl) returns an absolute http(s) URL or null.

• bind(destination, secret?) and payout(kind?, secret?) are management calls and need the secret.

new SponsorSlot(options)

AdtentionClient options (including serveOnly) plus { client?, category?, dwellMs?, cacheMax?, identityStore?, ref?, onError? }. serveOnly and identityStore are mutually exclusive: construction throws if both are set.

• next({ subject?, category? }) returns Sponsor | null (dwell-gated, cached, never throws).
• current(subject?) returns the last Sponsor from cache.
• api is the underlying AdtentionClient.

Helpers

getSponsorLine(opts), classify(text), classifyFiles(names), hashSubject(raw, opts?), newNonce(), sanitizeAd(s), stripAnsi(s), visibleWidth(s), CATEGORIES, isCategory(v). Errors are thrown as AdtentionError (.code, .status, .isNoInventory, .isUnknownPublisher).

License

MIT