IdleAds for VS Code

Earn from the thinking moment. IdleAds shows a single tasteful sponsor line in your status bar while your AI agent works, and pays you 70% of the revenue per provably-real impression — no editor patching, no creepy tracking.

What it does

Adds one status-bar item (our own real estate — every extension may do this). It shows the current sponsor line with a subtle ↗. Click it to visit the sponsor.
Polls the IdleAds gateway for the server-decided ad every ~60s (the server runs the auction and picks the ad — the extension is a renderer).
Measures real viewability: it reports on-screen time only while your VS Code window is actually focused, and only a validated impression (≥5s) is billed to the advertiser and credited to you. The server recomputes everything — the client is never trusted.
Fills the idle moments (when no sponsor is live) with a free channel: power-user tips for your AI coding tools, daily streaks, thinking-moment milestones, and an optional ambient git snapshot. Channel content is never an ad — it mints no token, reports nothing, and bills nobody.

IdleAds: Sign in (command palette) opens your browser for a device-code authorization. The bearer token is stored in VS Code SecretStorage (OS keychain). Signed out, the extension runs in demo mode and earns nothing.

Commands

Command
`IdleAds: Sign in` / `Sign out`	device-code auth
`IdleAds: Open dashboard`	your earnings + payouts on the web
`IdleAds: Pause / resume ads`	hide the status-bar item + stop measuring
`IdleAds: Open the current sponsor link`	what clicking the item does

Settings

Setting	Default
`idleads.gatewayUrl`	`https://idleads.dev`	gateway base URL (use `http://localhost:8791` for local dev)
`idleads.enabled`	`true`	show ads + accrue earnings
`idleads.channel.tips`	`true`	fill idle moments with power-user tips
`idleads.channel.streaks`	`true`	celebrate daily streaks + thinking-moment milestones
`idleads.channel.dashboard`	`false`	show an ambient git snapshot (branch · changes) on the idle line

Privacy

We measure time the window is focused while an ad is shown — nothing about your code, prompts, files, or projects. The only identifiers are a random device id and your account. The optional idleads.channel.dashboard line reads your local git branch + change count to render it on your own status bar — it is computed on your machine and never sent anywhere (a channel cycle reports nothing).

Develop

pnpm -F idleads-vscode build      # esbuild → dist/extension.js
pnpm -F idleads-vscode watch      # incremental
pnpm -F idleads-vscode typecheck
pnpm -F idleads-vscode package    # → idleads.vsix (requires @vscode/vsce)

Press F5 in this folder to launch an Extension Development Host. Set idleads.gatewayUrl to your local gateway to test end-to-end.

IdleAds — earn from the thinking moment

idleads