Question 1

What is BackSpin?

Accepted Answer

BackSpin is an open AI attention exchange. It turns AI wait states in IDEs, CLIs, coding agents, and AI tools into useful discovery moments, then verifies the attention, records aggregate market data, and shares revenue with participants. BackSpin is not a banner ad network. The core unit is quality-adjusted human attention seconds, not raw impressions or clicks.

Question 2

Who is BackSpin for?

Accepted Answer

Developers and publishers earn from the AI wait time they already spend. Advertisers buy verified attention and useful discovery across AI-native workflows. Anyone can watch the open bid market and aggregate ledger.

Question 3

How is BackSpin different from an ad network?

Accepted Answer

A classic ad network sells impressions or clicks and rewards whoever pays the most. BackSpin sells verified, quality-adjusted attention-seconds and ranks delivery on a multi-factor score, so money alone cannot buy reach. There is usually nothing to click during an AI wait, so BackSpin measures attention and recall (saves, later visits, brand searches, installs) instead of CTR. Every market figure (bid weights, clearing price, reputation, share of voice) is computed server-side and shown on the public board, so the system is auditable rather than a black box.

Question 4

Which tools can BackSpin support?

Accepted Answer

BackSpin is designed for VS Code, Cursor, Claude Code, ChatGPT Codex, Codex CLI, OpenCode CLI, Antigravity, Zed, browser-based AI tools, terminal workflows, and future AI coding agents. The integration method depends on the tool. VS Code and Cursor use the editor extension. Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and other terminal tools are wrapped by the CLI. Browser AI chat sites (ChatGPT, Claude.ai, Gemini, Perplexity) use the browser extension. To wrap a tool with the CLI, put `backspin` in front of it:

Question 5

How do I install and use the BackSpin CLI?

Accepted Answer

Install is one line. The installer auto-provisions a local account, so there is no separate sign-in step to get started.

Question 6

How do I connect my earnings to an account?

Accepted Answer

On first run, BackSpin auto-provisions a local account and gives it an opaque public code, so you start earning immediately with no sign-in. Your verified credits accrue to that code. To make those credits claimable and withdrawable, link the code to a real account with your email on the web app, under Sync and connect. Linking keeps every credit you already earned attached to the same identity, and the CLI, VS Code extension, and browser extension all accrue to that one account once connected. You do not need a session token for this. BACKSPIN_TOKEN is an advanced escape hatch for CI or shared machines only; a normal desktop install never sets it.

Question 7

How do I earn?

Accepted Answer

Install the producer (CLI wrapper or extension), sign in, and keep coding as normal. When your AI assistant is working, BackSpin shows a short sponsored discovery line in the wait state. You accrue credit for the verified attention that line genuinely receives on screen. There is nothing to click, refresh, or run on a schedule. The default revenue split credits the developer 50% of the value their verified attention generates; the rest funds BackSpin. The split is configurable by BackSpin and can carry per-surface, per-partner, or per-campaign overrides. Credits convert to USD at 1,000 credits = $5.00.

Question 8

How is a wait scored, and what makes it pay?

Accepted Answer

Each wait becomes an attention window and is scored on the published formula, clamped 0 to 100: AttentionScore = activity + focus + session_quality + workflow_relevance + trust_score - fraud_risk. Activity rewards real input (up to 40 points), focus adds 30 when the surface was in front of you, a valid session adds 10, workflow relevance sits at a neutral 10 for now, your trust score is added, and fraud risk is subtracted. A window pays only if it was focused, had genuine activity, ran on a valid session, lasted at least 3 seconds, and stayed under the fraud line. The window carries metadata only, never your code, prompts, file names, or repo.

Question 9

What is TrustRank and how does it affect me?

Accepted Answer

TrustRank is your quality score as a human giving attention, and it is a live term in AttentionScore (capped at 20 points). Today it comes from your verified history, the ratio of eligible human-verified windows to total windows. A brand-new account starts exactly at the neutral middle, so you are never punished for being new. A consistently real coding history lifts it above neutral; a bot-like history erodes it. Over time it can also weigh account age, session continuity, device reputation, and ratings. TrustRank for a developer is distinct from advertiser reputation, which scores campaigns.

Question 10

Can users click discovery cards during AI generation?

Accepted Answer

Often no. In Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and terminal generation flows, interaction can be impossible or disruptive while the AI is generating. That is why BackSpin does not treat CTR as the primary metric. BackSpin measures attention, recall, saves, ratings, later visits, and post-impression actions. This is closer to sponsorship and brand recall than classic search ads.

Question 11

What counts as a real (billable) impression?

Accepted Answer

An attention window earns only when all of these hold: the card was genuinely on screen during a live wait state; the wait came from a real, human-initiated coding request (not a script, bot, or loop run only to spin the spinner); the producer is properly installed, signed in, and connected; you are within the activity caps; and the window is not rejected by the fraud_risk score. Only your own foreground waits count. Background sub-agent / multi-agent waits do not accrue, and there is no background earning, accrual pauses when your editor is closed. Per-user spacing and hourly/daily caps mean ordinary coding is always covered and artificial bursts are not; exact cap values are not published.

Question 12

What can advertisers promote?

Accepted Answer

BackSpin supports sponsored tools, sponsored MCPs, API products, cloud platforms, startup deals, grants, jobs, open-source launches, templates, and devtools. Discovery cards today are deliberately clean: a square logo, one short line (up to 55 characters), a destination link, and the rating buttons. No image, GIF, carousel, or body paragraph is shown, so cards stay native and respectful of developer focus. Richer formats remain in the schema for future use but are not served right now.

Question 13

What does a discovery card look like?

Accepted Answer

One square brand logo, one short headline (up to 55 characters), a destination link shown as the call to action, and the rating buttons developers use after the wait. That is the whole card. There is no body paragraph and no image, GIF, or carousel today. Cards are structured data, never markup: you submit fields, BackSpin composes and safety-validates them, so what you write is exactly what gets served.

Question 14

How do I run a campaign?

Accepted Answer

Two ways. The fastest is the quick bid on the homepage or /market: add your email, brand, one ad line, a destination, then set a CPAS bid and a budget and pay. No account needed; you get a receipt code to track it. For ongoing campaigns, sign in to the advertiser portal, create a campaign (name plus category), add one or more validated discovery cards, then set your bid and budget and pay to go live. Every card is safety-validated on submission, and a new campaign starts pending until an admin approves the content.

Question 15

What is CPAS and how is pricing set?

Accepted Answer

CPAS is the cost per 1,000 quality-adjusted attention-seconds, the single pricing unit on BackSpin. You buy verified attention-seconds discounted by quality (weighted_attention = raw_seconds x attention_score / 100), so a half-noticed surface is worth less than a fully-read one and fraudulent seconds are filtered before they can be charged. You set a CPAS bid and a total budget. The bid sets your share of voice; the budget caps your spend. The live clearing price floats with real supply and demand, and the public board shows it so you can price against true market conditions, not a rate card.

Question 16

Does a bigger bid just buy more views?

Accepted Answer

No. Within a delivery batch, cards are ranked by a six-factor score multiplied together: CampaignScore = bid_weight x relevance x attention_quality x user_preference x advertiser_reputation x fairness_factor. Bid is one factor, not the whole story. Because the factors multiply, one weak link drags the whole score down. You cannot outbid an irrelevant match, a badly-rated card, or a category a developer has muted. A trusted advertiser who bids less can outrank a higher raw bid.

Question 17

What is share of voice, and how is it fair?

Accepted Answer

Share of voice is your slice of total delivery, not a fixed number of impressions. A batch is built in two passes: first a fair base floor seats each advertiser's best card so no one can wall off the page, then purchased share of voice fills the rest in rank order. Per-advertiser and per-category caps keep the mix varied, and fresh campaigns get a fairness boost so they can gather signal before competing on reputation. Allocation is never highest-bid-wins.

Question 18

What is advertiser reputation, and how is it different from TrustRank?

Accepted Answer

Advertiser reputation is a 0 to 100 score for your campaign, driven by how developers rate and engage with your cards (useful, neutral, annoying, dismissals, saves, and attention quality). It is a factor in CampaignScore and in the public board score, so a well-rated campaign earns more reach per dollar. TrustRank is the separate score for the human giving attention, used to verify that a wait is real. Reputation measures the advertiser; TrustRank measures the viewer. They are deliberately distinct signals.

Question 19

How do I measure results without clicks?

Accepted Answer

BackSpin measures recall, not CTR: saves, later visits, brand searches, installs, API-key creation, and deal redemptions. Your campaign report shows impressions, verified attention-seconds, spend, ratings, and attribution per campaign. Each served card carries a signed token on its link. A save is recorded automatically; for the rest, your own systems report the conversion back to BackSpin by echoing that token, so the outcome ties to the exact card that drove it. The signature is the credential, so you cannot be credited for a card you were never served, and you cannot fake one either.

Question 20

Can I boost an existing campaign on the board?

Accepted Answer

Yes. A targeted boost is a bid placed against a campaign already on the board (including one you do not own). Once the payment settles, the boost raises that campaign's share-of-voice weight. A self-published or your-own-campaign order sets its own weight when it goes live, so it is not a boost. Your CPAS bid and your budget are always sent separately: the bid sets share of voice, the budget is what you are charged.

Question 21

Do I need an account to advertise?

Accepted Answer

No. You can place a quick bid from the homepage with only an email and pay with crypto or PayPal. You receive a public code on your receipt, which you can sync on the Orders page to track your purchases, or link to a full account later from Sync & connect.

Question 22

Why is my campaign pending?

Accepted Answer

A new campaign starts pending until it is paid for and, where review applies, approved. BackSpin can require manual review for sponsored MCPs, developer tools, browser extensions, CLI install commands, jobs, grants, and product demos before delivery. Once it is paid and approved, the campaign goes live on the homepage, the market board, and across the CLI, VS Code, and browser surfaces. Unpaid drafts are pruned after 14 days.

Question 23

How does the open bid market work?

Accepted Answer

Advertisers buy share of voice and quality-adjusted attention, then BackSpin balances bid weight, relevance, TrustRank, campaign reputation, user preferences, and fairness caps. Allocation is an equal base floor plus a purchased share-of-voice boost, never highest-bid-wins. The public market shows aggregate campaign names, bid weights, market price, attention volume, reputation, share of voice, and open ledger data without exposing private user activity.

Question 24

What do the clearing price and lead bid mean?

Accepted Answer

The clearing price is the live CPAS the market is settling at, computed server-side from real supply and demand and bounded by the highest active bid. It is the number to price against, shown on the board and seeded into the quick-bid form. The lead bid is the CPAS a new advertiser would need to lead share of voice right now. Because rank is bid x reputation x fairness, the highest raw bid is often not rank one: a trusted advertiser who bids less can still lead, so the lead bid reflects real competition, not just the top number.

Question 25

How is the public board computed?

Accepted Answer

Every active campaign's board score is computed on the same factors the delivery ranker uses: board_score = bid_weight x advertiser_reputation x fairness_factor, and share_of_voice = board_score / sum of board scores across all campaigns. So what you see on /market is exactly what drives delivery, not a marketing mockup. The board also publishes the clearing price and the lead bid from the same engine. Reputation on the board is the advertiser's 0 to 100 score, a separate signal from the developer TrustRank gate.

Question 26

How do advertiser payments work?

Accepted Answer

BackSpin uses NOWPayments for crypto and PayPal (Orders v2, card or PayPal login on a hosted page). At checkout you choose your method when more than one is enabled; if only one is configured, it is used automatically. Each provider runs in either a live or sandbox environment, set by its configured credentials and API host, and the active one is shown in the admin payment-providers panel so it is never ambiguous which is charging real money. Delivery, refunds, and payout eligibility depend on verified attention, campaign status, fraud review, and provider settlement rules.

Question 27

How do developer withdrawals work?

Accepted Answer

Developers cash out earned reward credits from the Withdraw page. Crypto rails (USDT, Litecoin, Bitcoin) are available now; PayPal is coming soon. Credits convert to USD at the published rate of 1,000 credits = $5.00. Every payout is reviewed and approved by an admin before funds are sent. You see the exact net you will receive, after any platform fee, before you confirm. A rejected request returns the credits to your available balance.

Question 28

What fees does BackSpin charge?

Accepted Answer

The main split is the revenue share: developers keep 50% of the value their verified attention generates by default, and that split is configurable with per-surface, per-partner, or per-campaign overrides. On top of that, BackSpin may apply a small withdrawal fee, always shown transparently before you confirm a payout: a percentage of the amount (with an optional minimum floor) plus an optional flat fee, so the fee is max(amount x percentage, minimum) + flat. An optional publisher fee can also be taken from earned revenue. All fee values are set by BackSpin and the breakdown is itemized on the Withdraw page, so you never see a surprise deduction.

Question 29

Why does my credit balance move in steps, not continuously?

Accepted Answer

Earnings are credited per verified attention window, scored after the wait ends, not for every flicker of the spinner. So the number moves in steps as new waits are scored, and a counter that looks frozen during a short stretch of light usage is normal. Your dashboard can also trail live scoring by a short delay; reload before assuming anything is stuck.

Question 30

How does BackSpin verify attention and fight fraud?

Accepted Answer

Fraud risk is scored on every attention window as it is scored, as the fraud_risk term subtracted in AttentionScore, not a separate batch job. It catches superhuman input rates, samples timestamped outside the window, and durations implausibly longer than the real AI wait. A window at or above the reject threshold earns nothing. BackSpin can reject attention, reverse rewards, pause campaigns, hold balances, or block accounts when exchange integrity is at risk. The methodology is public while the exact thresholds and detection signatures stay protected so attackers cannot game them.

Question 31

How does BackSpin stop account farms?

Accepted Answer

Beyond per-window checks, BackSpin runs cross-account farm detection. The install origin is recorded as a one-way keyed hash of the IP (the raw IP is never stored) plus an optional client fingerprint, so it can spot many accounts minted behind one origin without surveilling anyone. When too many accounts share one origin, the cohort is flagged or, past a higher threshold, blocked. An account escalates active to flagged to blocked, never silently downgrading, and a blocked account still has its windows scored but earns zero reward. Accounts with a real earned history are given the benefit of the doubt so a genuine power user on shared Wi-Fi is not caught by network alone.

Question 32

What data does BackSpin collect?

Accepted Answer

BackSpin collects the minimum signals needed to run the exchange, fight fraud, attribute recall, and pay participants. Attention rows carry metadata only, never source code, file contents, prompts, or repo names. For diagnostics each window also carries a coarse host label kept as small as possible (e.g. "Chrome 126 · macOS · desktop"), never your raw user-agent or device. The install IP is stored only as a one-way keyed hash for farm detection. See the Privacy Policy for specifics.

Question 33

I'm coding but my earnings aren't moving.

Accepted Answer

This is usually display lag, not lost credit. Reload your dashboard first. Remember earnings are credited per scored window in steps, only your own foreground waits count, and accrual pauses when the editor is closed. If it is genuinely flat across a long active session, confirm you are signed in and the producer is connected, then reload. Still wrong? Email support@usebackspin.com from your account address and we will audit the ledger by hand.

Question 34

My withdrawal is still pending. What now?

Accepted Answer

Every withdrawal is reviewed and approved by an admin before funds are sent, so a short pending period is expected. You can see the status (in review, approved, paid, or rejected) on the Withdraw page. A rejected request returns the credits to your available balance, usually with a reason. Crypto payouts cannot be reversed once sent, so double-check your wallet address before requesting.

Question 35

How do I delete my account and data?

Accepted Answer

Email support@usebackspin.com from your account address and ask us to delete it. We close the account and erase your personal data. We hold deliberately little to begin with, attention rows are metadata only and never include your code.

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