kickbacksai

Get paid to wait in Claude Code. A sponsored status line for Claude Code — developers earn a share of ad revenue on every impression and click, while they code.

▶ Watch the 25-second demo  ·  see it live at kickbacksai.com

What it is

kickbacksai is a tiny CLI that renders a sponsored status line inside Claude Code. While Claude works — builds, tests, AI completions — a sponsored line sits in your status bar. You earn a 50% revenue share on every verified impression and click. Advertisers reach developers right where they focus; you get paid for the wait.

• Native to your terminal — lives in Claude Code's status line, nothing extra to open.
• Zero runtime dependencies — pure Node built-ins; the published package ships only dist/.
• Never breaks your status bar — every network call has an 800 ms hard timeout and degrades to a blank line on any failure.

⚠️ Early access: earnings are simulated while the network spins up. Exact payout terms will be published before launch.

Install

npm i -g kickbacksai
kickbacksai login        # pair this device with your account

kickbacksai login prints a short pairing code, then waits. Approve the code at kickbacksai.com/link (takes ~30 seconds) and the CLI finishes pairing automatically.

Enable in Claude Code

Add a statusLine entry to ~/.claude/settings.json:

{
  "statusLine": {
    "type": "command",
    "command": "kickbacksai statusline",
    "refreshInterval": 5
  }
}

That's it — Claude Code now runs kickbacksai statusline on each refresh and shows your sponsored line.

Commands

| Command | What it does | | --- | --- | | kickbacksai login | Pair this device with your account (approve at kickbacksai.com/link). | | kickbacksai statusline | Render the sponsored line. Run by Claude Code; you don't call it manually. |

Configuration

Set via environment variables:

| Variable | Default | Description | | --- | --- | --- | | KICKBACKSAI_API_URL | https://kickbacksai.com | Backend origin. | | KICKBACKSAI_HOME | ~/.kickbacksai | Config directory (stores credentials + local state). |

How it works

On each refresh, Claude Code pipes its status-line JSON into kickbacksai statusline. The CLI:

1. Fetches a sponsored line from the backend (hard 800 ms timeout).
2. Renders it as a clickable OSC 8 hyperlink, sized to your terminal width.
3. Once the line has been visible long enough (a server-verified dwell), reports the impression so your earnings accrue. Clicks are counted on interaction.

You keep 50% of the revenue. Impressions require a ~4-second dwell to count, so the accounting is fraud-bounded by design. Any failure — offline, slow, unauthenticated — degrades to a blank status line; it never throws and never exits non-zero.

Earnings

Track impressions, clicks, and payouts on your dashboard at kickbacksai.com. Advertisers can reach developers in-terminal via the For advertisers section there.

Develop

git clone [email protected]:fionalee1412/kickbacksai.git
cd kickbacksai
npm install
npm run build     # tsc → dist/ (test files excluded from the build)
npm test          # vitest, Node environment

The runtime uses only node:* built-ins; typescript, @types/node, and vitest are dev-only.

Links

• 🌐 Website & dashboard — kickbacksai.com
• 🔗 Approve a device — kickbacksai.com/link
• 📣 Advertise with us — kickbacksai.com → For advertisers