Kickbacks.ai helps developers get paid for AI-agent wait states. Advertisers bid for a tiny sponsored status line; users get 50% of ad revenue.
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I've had this running for a few days and it seems that after the first day the earnings are severely nerfed? The first day I ran this for a couple of hours which made 5.40 USD for 514 events, which was pretty promising. A few days later I've ran this for a whole day, and I earned 0.43 USD over 1587 events, which seems like the app is just going to make it harder for me to earn the closer I get to the 10 USD cash out threshold. I don't know if the extension has worked for anyone since I haven't seen anyone cash out yet, and even though its "free money" the extension requires constant baby sitting, asking me to reload the window or sign in again and again. Are you guys having an incident or something or do the earnings just tank after the first day?
@haxybaxy Reminds me a bit of the old days of Paid To Click sites ;-)
Honestly love the cheekiness of this, "get paid to wait" is a great hook :)
One thing I'm curious about on the technical side: since the integration lives in the status line, it gets the JSON payload Claude Code passes on every refresh (model, current working dir, session info...). To serve and attribute ads you presumably phone home pretty often.
So my real question is around privacy: what exactly does the status line script send to your servers? Do project paths / workspace dirs ever leave the machine, or is it stripped down to an anonymous impression ping? For folks working under NDA or on sensitive code, that's the make or break detail.
Not a gotcha, genuinely rooting for the idea, just think being upfront about the data flow would build a lot of trust here. Congrats on the launch!
This is a fantastic idea. I ran CodeFund (previously Code Sponsor) a handful of years back in an effort to fund OSS. Advertisers would pay top dollar knowing that they were getting their products in front of their exact target market.
Running an advertising company is difficult, especially when it comes to these types of audiences. As much as I hope this project succeeds, it's going to be a huge challenge if you plan on the developer retaining privacy.
For reference, see ethicalads.io and how they manage to balance privacy with advertising data.
The hook is clever: agent wait time is basically the new compile time.
The trust boundary is the product, though. For developers under NDA, the key question is what leaves the machine when the status line refreshes. Is the ad request limited to anonymous impression metadata, or can things like workspace path, repo name, model, current directory, or session context ever be sent upstream?
A public “exact payload we collect” page would probably help adoption more than any growth copy here.
This seems like a troll idea, but SUPRISIGLY good.
I think the next piece of validation is "what does a dev do when they're waiting for Claude".
Because a lot of people I know (eg. me) just start doomscrolling or clicking around testing bugs on their product or whatever they're building.
Good luck Gabe, congrats!
Great idea, but it seems I have to auth the vscode extension via Google even if I have registered with some other email address. So I am not able to use it except with email addresses that are not tied to any Google account?
Oh, also my Claude Code CLI is running on an external host (dedicated Debian machine), I am connected via SSH from my vscode at home. I get a lot of timeout and other messages.
After 3 times reloading the window and signing in Kickback is now "green"!
@michaelpehl seems that they need to do a bit more "trial and error" coz i cant figure this stuff either
Clever and slightly surreal market: monetizing agent wait states. I like the 50/50 revenue share. How are you thinking about keeping sponsored status lines useful to developers rather than just another ad surface?