Tributly

Get paid for the line your AI coding assistant shows while it thinks.

Claude Code prints a word in its panel while it works. Tributly puts a short sponsored line there instead, and pays you for the seconds it is on screen. When the answer arrives, the line goes away.

Codex works the same way: while it says it is thinking, the line sits under that row, and it goes when the answer does. One line at a time, whichever assistant started first.

What you need

Two pieces, one command:

npm install -g @tributly/ide
tributly-ide pair

The client is the half that earns: it talks to Tributly, keeps track of what was shown, and installs this extension for you. This extension is the half that draws the line in the panel. On its own it does nothing — without the client there is nothing to show and nothing to pay, and the status bar will say so.

tributly-ide pair prints a code. Enter it in your dashboard at app.tributly.io and you are earning.

What it shows you

A Tributly item sits in the status bar from the moment you connect. It carries what you have earned on this machine, and it is also the menu: your daily and weekly ceilings, who is on the line right now, pause and resume, and a link to your dashboard. Click it.

The figure updates every half hour rather than after each ad, so one you have just watched may not be in it yet. That is the cadence, not a fault. The balance that counts is in your dashboard.

What it changes on your machine

Four things, all reversible, and none of them happens until you have paired.

Claude Code's panel. The panel is a webview with its own renderer, and there is no published way to put anything into it. Reaching it means appending one block to Claude Code's own webview/index.js. We keep a byte-exact backup and put the original back when you turn the line off or uninstall; if that file has changed in the meantime we leave it alone rather than overwrite it. The code we append is a plain file inside this extension that you can open and read. You can switch it off in settings (tributly.panelLine) and nothing is written at all.

Codex's panel. The same line, under the row where Codex says it is thinking. Their page is webview/index.html, and reaching it means adding one <script> tag to it and putting our renderer in that folder beside it. None of Codex's own code is edited, and its content security policy is not touched — it already allows a script and a stylesheet from its own folder, which is the whole channel. We keep a byte-exact backup, put the page back and delete both of our files when you turn the line off or uninstall, and leave the page alone if it has changed in the meantime. Switch it off in settings (tributly.codexPanelLine) and nothing is written at all.

Codex's session journal, read and never written. Codex has no hooks to tell us when it starts and stops working, so the extension reads the journal Codex already keeps in ~/.codex/sessions and takes exactly two lines out of it: the one that says a turn started and the one that says it ended. Your conversations are not read, nothing from those files leaves your machine, and tributly.codex turns the reading off entirely. Codex's own notify setting is deliberately left alone: it holds one command, and on most machines that command is already something of OpenAI's.

Claude Code's settings. The client writes claudeCode.spinnerVerbs, which is how the line reaches the terminal. Your own verbs are kept and restored.

Nothing else on your machine is touched, no port is opened, and the panel never reaches the network: the line is delivered as a stylesheet beside the bundle.

What is counted

A line is paid when it was on screen for at least eight seconds of a turn you were present for. Clicks pay more. Everything that decides the money — the price, the minimum interval, the daily and weekly ceilings — is decided by the server, not by your machine, and you can see all of it in the dashboard.

You earn in one place at a time, this or the browser extension, and you choose which in the dashboard.

Removing it

tributly-ide uninstall takes out both halves: the hooks, the settings key, the panel block and this extension. Uninstalling this extension alone also puts the panel block back.

Tributly is at tributly.io.