arbidle — get paid while your agent thinks

Your AI agent is working. Your build is running. Your tests are churning. arbidle turns those idle seconds into income — without ever reading a line of your code.

When a wait state begins, one small, contextual, cryptographically-signed developer ad appears in a sidebar. You glance at it (or you don't), and you earn. That's the whole deal.

Built for the agentic stack — Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Aider, Copilot — and for any heavy build, test, deploy, container, or package job.

Why arbidle is different

Most "earn while you code" tools ask you to trust them with your workspace. arbidle is engineered so you don't have to — every claim below is something you can audit:

🔒 Zero-read telemetry. Wait states are detected only from the editor's Shell Integration boundaries — the command you launched, and that's it. We never read your terminal output, files, environment variables, git, clipboard, or agent logs. An extension that can't read your workspace can't leak it.
✍️ Every ad is cryptographically signed. Each creative is an Ed25519-signed payload, verified against a pinned public key before it renders. A tampered or unsigned ad is dropped, never shown. Fail closed.
📦 Sandboxed by construction. Ads render inside an iframe with sandbox="allow-scripts" and no allow-same-origin, behind a strict CSP. No access to your editor, no network back-channel, no remote code execution.
🤖 Proof-of-Work anti-fraud. Every impression carries a Hashcash proof plus behavioral attestation — so advertisers pay for real human idle-moments and your payouts stay legitimate.
🛡️ Respects your telemetry choice. If your editor's global telemetry is off (telemetry.telemetryLevel: off), arbidle makes zero exchange calls and shows a privacy-mode state — no auctions until you turn telemetry back on. Your own arbidle.enabled toggle is the other master kill.

How it works

You run something heavy — an agent, a build, tests, a deploy, a container, or a package install.
arbidle notices the wait via Shell Integration event boundaries (OSC 633) — never the output, never your files.
A signed ad is fetched, verified, and rendered in the sidecar while the job runs.
You earn for every verified impression. Cash out via Stripe when payouts are enabled for your account.

Install

Search "arbidle" in the Extensions view (Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium), or:

code --install-extension arbidle.arbidle

Open the arbidle icon in the activity bar, then run any heavy command in a terminal with shell integration. An ad appears while the job runs; the footer ticker tracks your verified impressions and earnings.

Privacy at a glance

What leaves your machine	What we never touch
The command category you launched (e.g. "build")	Terminal output / buffers
Your active file's language id	Your source files
A one-way hash of your workspace folder name	Env vars, secrets, git, clipboard, agent logs

Full threat model: SECURITY.md.

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
`arbidle.enabled`	`true`	Master switch for wait-state detection.
`arbidle.demoMode`	`false`	Locally-signed sample ads, no backend (a safe preview that earns nothing). Off by default so a fresh install auctions live and earns.
`arbidle.endpoint`	`https://www.arbidle.com`	Exchange base URL (used only when demo is off). Change only for a self-hosted exchange.
`arbidle.publicKey`	`""`	Advanced: override the built-in Ed25519 verification key (64 hex chars).
`arbidle.minDwellMs`	`1500`	Min visible+focused time before an impression counts.
`arbidle.minWaitMs`	`1200`	Min wait duration before an ad renders (anti-flicker).
`arbidle.maxAdsPerHour`	`12`	Client-side frequency cap per workspace (0 = uncapped).
`arbidle.powDifficulty`	`3`	Demo Proof-of-Work difficulty (leading hex zeros).
`arbidle.statusBar.enabled`	`true`	Show the arbidle status-bar item.
`arbidle.statusBar.showEarnings`	`true`	Append running earnings to the status-bar item.

Support

Questions, payout help, or found a bug? Open an issue on GitHub or visit arbidle.com.

arbidle — Monetize the Wait

arbidle