Archived experiment · 2026
SpinShareAI workflow sponsor slots
Could the loading spinner inside AI coding tools become a new ad surface? SpinShare tested that hypothesis with a CLI interceptor, a VSCode extension, and a live ad marketplace. The experiment ran in 2026 and is now archived.
Frozen demo · no live data
What the sponsor slot looked like
A side-by-side of the AI CLI loading state, with and without the sponsored overlay. This is a static render — no live bids, no real ad serving.
Stock AI spinner
With SpinShare overlay
LearnX · master AI engineeringThe sponsored overlay rendered inside the AI's loading state. Ads were only counted as impressions after 3 seconds of viewability.
How it worked
Three pieces, one experiment
CLI interceptor
A wrapper around AI CLIs (Claude Code) that intercepted the loading spinner and injected sponsored text into the wait state.
VSCode extension
An extension that overlaid sponsored text on the AI's loading state inside the IDE, with a terminal auto-wrap mode.
Web marketplace
A live marketplace matched advertisers to developers. The highest CPM bid won placement. Stripe handled checkout and payouts.
Historical artifact
Launch reels
The original launch demo and campaign walkthrough. Historical context only — SpinShare is no longer operating as a live marketplace.
Launch demo
Campaign walkthrough
Postmortem
What actually happened
52K
views on X.com
Launch went viral. The premise got attention.
4
signups
A handful of users created accounts.
0
usage
No one actually ran the sponsored-spinner flow.
The launch went viral on X.com, reaching 52K views. Four users signed up. Zero actually ran the sponsored-spinner flow. The experiment showed that viral attention doesn't translate to adoption when onboarding friction is high and the value proposition requires integration partners we didn't have. The marketplace never reached the chicken-and-egg escape velocity it needed.
Full write-up with lessons learned: POSTMORTEM.md