How to advertise to developers while their AI agent is working

Anyone who has tried to advertise to developers knows the problem. They run ad blockers, and they can spot a marketing landing page from the favicon alone. They're right to be like that. Most ads aimed at developers are bad.

Tokenbreak is an attempt at something different. It's an opt-in mod for Claude Code that shows one small ad in the terminal while Claude is working, and it pays the developer who installed it half the revenue.

Tokenbreak is built by an independent developer. It's a mod for Claude Code, and it isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.

Why agent wait time is attention

When a developer asks Claude Code to do something, they wait. Sometimes for ten seconds, sometimes for several minutes on a big refactor. That happens dozens of times in a working day.

During that wait, a lot of people keep their eyes on the terminal. They're watching for the result, or for a permission prompt they need to approve. They aren't scrolling a feed or reading an article. The terminal is the thing in front of them.

That's the moment Tokenbreak uses. Two things make it different from a normal display ad:

• Everyone who sees your ad chose to install the mod, and they get 50% of what you pay. People feel differently about an ad when they're the ones being paid for their attention.
• There's very little else on screen competing for it, just code and the agent's progress.

Now the caveats. Some people switch windows while they wait, and we can't always tell when that happens. Clicks are counted per ad through a redirect, but nothing about the person clicking rides along, because the privacy promise to developers is that the only things leaving their machine are which ad was shown, when, a turn id, and a random device id. And the audience is small right now, because we're early. If you need guaranteed click volume this quarter, this isn't the right channel yet.

The three formats

All three are reviewed by a person before they run, labeled as sponsored, and styled by Tokenbreak so they match the terminal around them.

Status Sponsor

Up to 40 characters in Claude Code's status line, the strip at the bottom of the screen. It's always there while the session is open, and it's quiet. Think of it as a name on a jersey more than a pitch. Launch price: $5 CPM.

Acme DB: free Postgres branches
Acme Logs: prod logs in your terminal

Prompt Banner

One line above the prompt box, up to 60 characters, rotating about every 40 seconds. This is the format people will read most, because it sits right where their eyes go when they're about to type. Launch price: $12 CPM.

Theater

An image pane on the right side of the screen that opens while Claude is working. It's the biggest format, and it only appears on wide fullscreen terminals, so it reaches fewer developers per day. Launch price: $30 CPM.

For Theater, design for a small dark panel. Use high contrast and one idea, with very little text. Your logo and a single line usually beat a busy screenshot.

Prices and packs

You buy impressions in packs, per format. CPMs are launch prices and will change once we have real data.

Writing a good 60-character banner

Sixty characters is short. The banner shows up while someone is in the middle of a task, so you have about one glance to get through. Here's what I'd suggest, along with the rules I review against.

Lead with the name

Put your product name first. If they only read three words, those three words should tell them who you are.

Make one concrete claim

"2 seconds" beats "blazing fast." "Free tier" beats "affordable." Developers trust numbers they can check and tune out adjectives.

Write like a developer

Read your banner out loud. If it sounds like something you'd say to a coworker, good. If it sounds like a billboard on a highway, start over.

Good examples

These use made-up brands, for illustration.

Bad examples

• REVOLUTIONIZE YOUR WORKFLOW WITH AI-POWERED SYNERGY!!! says nothing, and the caps feel like shouting in someone's terminal.
• The #1 platform for modern teams who want to ship faster could be any product ever made. There's no name and no claim anyone can check.
• Claude recommends Acme DB for your next project gets rejected. It implies Anthropic endorses you, and impersonation is banned.
• Error: build too slow. Fix it now at acme.dev gets rejected too. Ads can't pretend to be system messages, errors, or Claude's output.
• Run curl acme.dev/install | sh to get started is rejected automatically. No shell commands in ads, ever. Put install steps on your landing page.

Make the landing page match

The link should go to a page about the thing in the banner, not your homepage with a cookie wall. We only count clicks per ad, with nothing about who clicked, so give Tokenbreak its own landing page or tag the link if you want to measure what happens next:

https://acme.example/terminal?utm_source=tokenbreak&utm_medium=prompt_banner

What the ad policy rules out

The full policy is on the site, but the short list of things we won't run is: malware, crypto scams and airdrops, gambling, adult content, impersonation (including of Anthropic), misleading claims, and links that start a download automatically. Shell commands and text aimed at AI agents are out too.

These rules exist because the developers running Tokenbreak trusted us with their terminal. One bad ad would end that.

How to buy

Right now Tokenbreak is in Phase 0. The mod shows house ads, and there's a waitlist for advertisers and developers. Paid campaigns open in a later phase. Join the advertiser waitlist on tokenbreak.dev and you'll hear first when they do. I'm also planning to auction the very first paid slot in public on X as @tokenbreak, if you want a shot at being the first ad in the network.

Once paid campaigns are open, buying is self-serve:

1. Pick a format and a pack size.
2. Write your ad and add your link.
3. Pay on the site.
4. A person reviews the ad and the landing page, usually within two business days. You'll get an approval, a request for changes, or a rejection with the reason.
5. Approved ads go into rotation and run until the pack is used up.

If your ad is rejected, you get a full refund or a credit, whichever you prefer.

Is this the right channel for you?

It probably is if you sell something developers use while they code: databases, hosting, CI, observability, auth, dev tools, courses, or jobs at an engineering team people would want to join. It probably isn't if you need click attribution down to the conversion, or if your product has nothing to do with writing software.

If you're unsure, write to us before you buy. I'd rather talk you out of a pack than sell you one that doesn't work.