Shows small, unobtrusive sponsored messages at natural pauses in your VS
Code workflow, and lets you earn a share of the revenue. See the root
docs/architecture.md for how this fits into
the wider platform.
Setup
Install the extension.
Run AdFrolic: Sign In from the command palette. This opens the
AdFrolic web app in your browser with a short confirmation code
pre-filled — confirm there, then return to VS Code.
Sponsored messages start appearing in the status bar (vscode.ai_wait
placement, refreshed periodically while the window is focused) and in
the AdFrolic sidebar view (vscode.sidebar placement, refreshed while
the panel is visible).
Sign-in uses a device-authorization flow (the same mechanism gh auth login uses) rather than an in-editor OAuth redirect — see
src/deviceAuthFlow.ts and apps/api/src/routes/deviceAuth.ts. The
resulting session token is stored in VS Code's SecretStorage (OS
keychain-backed), never in plain settings.
Run AdFrolic: Sign Out to clear the stored session.
Settings
Setting
Default
Purpose
adfrolic.enabled
true
Master on/off switch.
adfrolic.apiBaseUrl
https://api.adfrolic.com
Only change for local development against a non-production API.
adfrolic.webBaseUrl
https://adfrolic.com
Used to build the sign-in confirmation URL and the dashboard link.
Design constraints
No source code, open files, or workspace contents are ever sent to the
backend — see docs/privacy.md. The client only sends installation id,
placement, coarse OS, and optional language/country.
Advertiser creative is a validated structured object, never raw HTML/JS
(docs/security.md) — the sidebar webview escapes everything it
interpolates regardless.
A failure anywhere in this extension must never disrupt normal editor use
(spec section 77): every network call in @adfrolic/ad-client fails
silently rather than throwing into the host.
