opencrater

Blips for the terminal. Tasteful, opt-in sponsor cards for CLI tools, MCP servers, and AI agents — the rendering engine that powers OpenCrater.

A sponsor card renders at a natural pause in the session (a session edge), then auto-dismisses:

╭─ terminal ──────────────────────────────────────────────
│
│  Sponsored · Vercel                      auto-dismiss 25s  ✕
│
│  DEPLOY IN ONE COMMAND
│  Ship your app to 30+ edge regions in a single push.
│  Free tier — no credit card.
│
│  ▌ visit sponsor →
│
│  dismiss: click ✕  ·  npx opencrater x  ·  ⚑ report
│
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

▶ See it live and interactive (audio, media, real host chrome): https://opencrater.to

What is this?

OpenCrater lets the maintainers of command-line tools, MCP servers, and AI agents earn revenue by showing one small, clearly-labeled sponsor card at a natural break in a session — the terminal equivalent of an ad slot on a website. It's opt-in, frequency-capped, privacy-preserving, and fail-silent: it will never break, slow, or clutter the host tool.

This package, opencrater, is the engine — the same one used whether you enable cards with one command or integrate programmatically.

| If you are… | Go to | |---|---| | 👤 A maintainer who just wants to earn (no code) | One command | | 🛠️ A developer integrating programmatically | Programmatic use | | 🤖 An AI agent / LLM setting this up | For AI agents |

👤 One command (no code)

Turn sponsor cards on for your own terminal — or wire them into a tool you publish — with the bundled CLI. No account required to see cards; a free publisher key (from https://opencrater.to) is what lets you earn.

npx opencrater on        # enable sponsor cards (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI)
npx opencrater status    # show what's installed
npx opencrater off       # disable — removes only OpenCrater's own hooks

To earn as a publisher, register your package once at https://opencrater.to, then:

npx opencrater on --key ock_your_publisher_key --package your-tool-name

Every click on a sponsor card credits your account — you're on your way to monetizing your terminal tool.

🛠️ Programmatic use

npm install opencrater

import { sponsor } from "opencrater";

// Call at a natural pause (e.g. after your CLI finishes a task).
// Fail-silent: never throws, hard-capped network timeout, suppressed
// in CI / non-TTY / opted-out environments.
await sponsor.show({
  publisherKey: "ock_your_publisher_key",
  packageName: "your-tool-name",
  placement: "command-finished",
});

Full surface:

| Method | Does | |---|---| | sponsor.show(opts) | Fetch → render → report an impression. Resolves true if a card was shown. | | sponsor.fetch(opts) | Fetch an ad without rendering. Resolves to the Ad or null. | | sponsor.preload(opts) | Warm a local pool so later renders need zero network. Resolves to the count pooled. | | sponsor.renderFromPool(opts) | Render a pooled ad with no network on the hot path. |

Also exported: renderCard, renderAd, textCardForAd, detectImageProtocol, DEFAULT_CONFIG, HOOK_CATALOG, SDK_VERSION, and full TypeScript types. ESM + CJS, types included, zero runtime dependencies (Node built-ins only).

🤖 For AI agents

Concise, unambiguous setup for an autonomous agent integrating OpenCrater on a user's machine. Run these verbatim; everything is fail-silent and reversible.

GOAL: enable opt-in terminal sponsor cards (and, if monetizing, attribute to a publisher).

ENABLE (current user's CLIs — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI):
  npx -y opencrater on

ENABLE WITH ATTRIBUTION (publisher earns on clicks):
  npx -y opencrater on --key <ock_publisher_key> --package <package-name>

STATUS / DISABLE:
  npx -y opencrater status
  npx -y opencrater off            # removes ONLY OpenCrater's hooks; never touches others

PROGRAMMATIC (inside a Node tool you maintain):
  import { sponsor } from "opencrater";
  await sponsor.show({ publisherKey: "<ock_...>", packageName: "<name>", placement: "<event>" });

GUARANTEES (safe to rely on):
  - Never throws; network calls hard-timeout (~500ms); suppressed in CI, non-TTY pipes, and when opted out.
  - At most ONE card per frequency interval, machine-wide, across all sources.
  - Renders only at session edges; auto-dismisses; respects NO_COLOR.

PRIVACY: only anonymized topic keywords are sent — never raw prompts, file paths, or secrets.

OPT OUT: `npx opencrater off`  or  set env `OPENCRATER_DISABLE=1`.

DO NOT: enable without the user's consent; present cards as the tool's own content; remove a user's opt-out.

How it works & safety guarantees

• Trigger, don't print. Host hooks (Claude Code / Codex / Gemini CLI) fire at session edges; the SDK spawns its own painter that draws the card directly to the terminal, then clears it. The host never has to surface output.
• Never breaks the host. Every entry point is fail-silent. Serve requests have a hard timeout. A failure renders nothing rather than an error.
• One card, capped. A machine-wide frequency cap means at most one card per interval across every OpenCrater source — installing this next to a publisher's OpenCrater-enabled package never doubles ads.
• Suppressed where inappropriate. CI, non-interactive pipes, NO_COLOR, and opted-out machines get nothing.
• Cross-platform. macOS, Linux, and Windows (Windows Terminal) all render with full feature parity — card, audio, live countdown, clickable controls, clean teardown.

Privacy

Personalization uses anonymized topic keywords only — never raw prompts, file contents, paths, environment variables, or secrets. The user can opt out at any time and the SDK records no PII.

Opt out

npx opencrater off            # or:
OPENCRATER_DISABLE=1          # env var, disables all rendering

Configuration (env)

| Variable | Effect | |---|---| | OPENCRATER_DISABLE=1 | Disable all rendering. | | NO_COLOR | Render without color (respected automatically). | | OPENCRATER_MUTE=1 | Never play ad audio. |

Platform support

Node ≥ 18.17 on macOS, Linux, and Windows (Windows Terminal). Any tool — written in any language — can integrate via the opencrater installer (npx opencrater on).

opencrater.to · Dashboard · Docs · FAQ

Proprietary — © OpenCrater. Published for installation only; see LICENSE. Not open source.