Terms of Service

To use the Service you must:

• be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract;
• if you install the extension on a device or account provided by an employer or other organization, have that organization’s authorization to do so and to receive earnings;
• not be barred from using the Service under the laws of any applicable jurisdiction; and
• maintain only one earning account per person. Operating multiple earning accounts, or pooling devices or accounts to inflate activity, is a material breach of these Terms.

The thinking.ad extension detects “wait states” — the periods when your AI coding assistant (for example, while it is reading, thinking, or generating) would otherwise show a generic spinner — and, only if you have turned ads on, replaces that spinner text with a short sponsored message. Advertisers compete for these slots in a real-time auction priced per one thousand impressions (CPM) and, where applicable, per click (CPC). The highest qualifying bid serves first.

We do not guarantee that the Service will be available at any particular time, that any impressions will be served, that any campaign will be available to bid against, or that you will earn any particular amount. We may add, change, suspend, or remove features at any time.

Sponsored messages are off by default. No ad is shown, and no impression is recorded for earning purposes, until you explicitly enable ads. You may turn ads off at any time from the extension, which stops new impressions from accruing. Ad copy is short, generic, and non-targeted; it contains no information about you.

You must provide accurate account information (such as a name and email) and keep it current. You are responsible for activity under your account and for safeguarding any credentials. Accounts are personal to you and may not be sold, transferred, or assigned without our prior written consent. Notify us promptly at support@thinking.ad if you suspect unauthorized use.

5.1 Revenue share. When you have ads enabled, you accrue a ledger credit equal to 60% of the net advertising revenue attributable to qualifying impressions and clicks served on your device. We retain the remainder. Your credit is tracked in USDC in your account ledger.

5.2 Qualifying activity. An impression is billable only if it is actually displayed for at least 2 seconds, is confirmed by a valid serve-time token, arises from genuine, human-initiated use of your AI assistant, and clears our fraud checks. Impressions or clicks that are automated, simulated, incentivized, or otherwise generated to manufacture earnings do not qualify and will not be paid.

5.3 Caps and holds. To deter abuse, credit beyond 20 USDC per hour or 200 USDC per day, and any credit our systems flag, is recorded but held as “under review” and is not payable unless and until it clears review. We may also apply per-window rate limits to impressions and clicks.

5.4 Estimates and adjustment. Displayed balances are estimates subject to reconciliation, correction, and audit. We may adjust your balance to correct errors, reverse fraudulent or non-qualifying activity, or reflect chargebacks or refunds. We may change the revenue share, caps, thresholds, or qualification rules prospectively; material changes are subject to Section 16.

5.5 Withdrawal. Once your cleared balance reaches at least 10 USDC, you may request an on-chain withdrawal to the wallet address you provide (see Section 6). You are solely responsible for supplying a correct address. Withdrawals may be delayed or withheld pending fraud or compliance review.

5.6 No employment; taxes. The revenue share is a discretionary distribution. It is not a wage, salary, fee, or guaranteed payment, and nothing in these Terms creates an employment, contractor, agency, partnership, or joint-venture relationship between you and Thinking Labs. You are solely responsible for determining and paying any taxes that apply to amounts you receive and for any reporting your jurisdiction requires.

5.7 Forfeiture. If you close your account, or if we terminate it for breach or suspected fraud, any unpaid balance below the withdrawal minimum, and any balance attributable to activity that breached these Terms, is forfeited.

6.1 How settlement works. Earnings are denominated in USDC and, when you withdraw, are sent by an ERC-20 token transfer from our treasury wallet to the wallet address you supply. Advertiser funding is received as an on-chain USDC transfer that we verify before crediting a campaign.

6.2 You control your wallet. We never hold your private keys. On-chain transactions are generally irreversible. We are not responsible for funds sent to an incorrect, incompatible, or compromised address, for lost keys, for network fees, for chain congestion or reorganization, or for the acts of any wallet provider, bridge, exchange, or network you choose to use.

6.3 Not financial advice. Nothing in the Service is investment, financial, legal, tax, or accounting advice, and nothing here is an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any security, token, or other instrument. Digital assets carry risk, including total loss of value. You use them at your own risk.

6.4 Compliance. You represent that you are not located in, and are not a national or resident of, any country subject to comprehensive sanctions, and that you do not appear on any prohibited-party or sanctions list. You agree to use the Service only for lawful purposes.

7.1 Campaigns and bids. Advertisers create campaigns, submit ad content, fund campaigns with USDC, and bid per one thousand impressions (and optionally per click). The highest qualifying bid serves first. You may pause, edit, or delete a campaign at any time, but bids already applied to impressions that have been served are final.

7.2 Spend is non-refundable once served. Amounts spent against delivered impressions and recorded clicks are final and non-refundable. If impressions you paid for were not delivered, your unspent funded balance remains available for future delivery or, at our discretion, may be refunded on-chain.

7.3 Content warranties. You warrant that your ad content and any destination it links to are lawful, accurate, and not misleading, infringing, defamatory, deceptive, or harmful, and contain no malware. You may not advertise content that is prohibited by law or that promotes illegal activity, and we may reject, remove, or suspend any ad or campaign at any time, for any reason or no reason, without liability.

7.4 License. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, reproduce, display, and transmit your ad content and brand assets for the purpose of operating and promoting the Service while your campaign is active.

7.5 Advertiser indemnity. You will defend, indemnify, and hold Thinking Labs harmless from any claim arising out of your ad content, the products or sites it promotes, or your breach of this Section.

You agree not to, and not to help anyone else:

• generate impressions or clicks by automation, scripts, bots, click farms, paid-to-click schemes, device or account pooling, or any means other than your own genuine use of an AI coding assistant;
• run meaningless or repetitive activity for the purpose of generating ad views;
• operate multiple earning accounts, share credentials, or evade caps, rate limits, or other controls;
• tamper with, falsify, or interfere with impression, click, or telemetry data;
• reverse engineer, decompile, or spoof communications with the Service, except where that restriction is prohibited by law; or
• use the Service to violate any law or the rights of any third party.

8.1 Detection and enforcement. We use automated and manual review to detect abuse. If we suspect a breach of this Section, we may, in our discretion, void affected activity, withhold or reverse payouts, suspend or permanently terminate accounts, and recover amounts already paid that are attributable to the breach. In any dispute about whether activity is legitimate, our records and detection systems are presumptively accurate, and you bear the burden of demonstrating otherwise.

The extension works by changing how a third-party application (such as an IDE or coding-assistant CLI) displays status text during wait states. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic, Microsoft, GitHub, OpenAI, or any other platform; names are used only to describe compatibility.

You are solely responsible for ensuring that your use of the Service complies with the terms of any third-party software you use it with. Those platforms may change, block, or take action against integrations like ours at any time. By installing the extension you assume all risk arising from third-party platforms, including the risk that a third-party account of yours could be limited or terminated, and we are not liable for any resulting loss or interruption.

Our handling of data is described in our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms. In short: the extension transmits only an opaque developer identifier and a random per-display session identifier. It never sends your code, prompts, AI responses, files, file names, selections, or repository metadata, and our data model has no field in which such content could be stored.

The Service, including the extension, website, software, and thinking.ad marks, is owned by Thinking Labs and its licensors. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to install and use the extension for its intended purpose. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, or create derivative works from the Service except as expressly permitted. Any feedback you provide may be used by us without restriction or compensation.

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, including the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Service will meet your requirements, that earnings will reach any level, that campaigns will achieve any result, that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, timely, or error-free, or that the extension will not conflict with, interfere with, or affect other software. You assume all risk of data loss or system harm arising from your use of the extension.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Thinking Labs and its officers, employees, and agents will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, or lost or diminished value of digital assets, arising out of or relating to the Service, even if advised of the possibility.

Our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Service will not exceed the greater of the total amounts actually paid to you by us in the twelve months before the claim, or one hundred US dollars (US$100). These limits apply even if a remedy fails of its essential purpose. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of these may not apply to you.

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Thinking Labs from and against any claim, loss, liability, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your use of the Service, your breach of these Terms, your violation of any law or third-party right, or any dispute between you and an employer or other third party regarding your use of the Service.

You may stop using the Service and close your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access at any time, with or without cause and with or without notice, including for breach of these Terms or suspected fraud. On termination, your license to use the extension ends and you must uninstall it. Sections that by their nature should survive — including earnings forfeiture, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and dispute resolution — survive termination.

We may update these Terms from time to time. Changes take effect when posted, except that we will give reasonable advance notice (by email, in-extension notice, or on the website) of material changes to the revenue share, the way earnings are calculated, the dispute-resolution section, or the limitation of liability. Your continued use of the Service after a change takes effect is your acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree, stop using the Service and uninstall the extension.

17.1 Informal resolution first. Before starting a formal proceeding, you agree to contact us at legal@thinking.ad and try in good faith to resolve the dispute for at least 30 days.

17.2 Binding arbitration. Except for disputes about intellectual property or claims for injunctive relief, any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved by final, binding, individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA), seated in Wilmington, Delaware.

17.3 Class-action and jury-trial waiver. You and Thinking Labs agree that disputes will be brought only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, consolidated, or representative proceeding. Both parties waive any right to a jury trial.

17.4 Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Either party may seek injunctive relief in a court of competent jurisdiction to prevent irreparable harm pending arbitration. If the class-action waiver is held unenforceable as to any claim, that claim will proceed in court, and all other claims remain in arbitration.

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service and supersede prior agreements. If any provision is held unenforceable, it will be modified to the minimum extent necessary and the rest remains in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets. We are not liable for any delay or failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control. You consent to receive communications from us electronically.

Thinking Labs (the operator of thinking.ad)
[registered business address — complete before launch]
General/legal: legal@thinking.ad · Support: support@thinking.ad · Privacy: privacy@thinking.ad