Connor O'Brien

Hi! I'm the guy putting ads in your editor (VS Code and CLI) with Amp. AKA, the worst person in dev tools. I thought, amidst all the Anthropic / ToS drama and Amp launching a new and updated free offering, I'd take the opportunity to talk about our ads network. (Long post; sorry in advance) A little about the free offering: > you get $10 in free credits every day (up to $300 / month! | $3,600 / year!) > use them however you want with Smart mode (Opus 4.5), Rush mode (Haiku), or specialized subagents like the oracle (GPT 5.2) and the librarian (Sonnet 4.5). > we replenish credits at $0.42 per hour > If you run out, wait an hour or continue with pay-as-you-go How can we do this? Simple: Enterprise customers and **ads**. These fund free usage for users, teams, and even enterprises. More about our ads network: > we only partner with reputable dev tool companies, so you aren’t going to get a Burger King ad while debugging a YAML file (see screenshot below). > ads are unobtrusive by design so they don't f&*k with your focus and flow > your code is safe; our ads network follows all of our established security conventions (link in comments) > we don't train on your data to service ads > if you don't want ads (or, free credits) just pay for usage Why did we go this route? > inference. is. expensive. > if it isn't painfully obvious, a $200/month, or $20/month plan doesn't pay for the amount of tokens people actually use with these tools > this is why we viewed the AI coding space as a house of cards: every company (ours included) was and is subsidizing usage to attract users. > and, it works / worked! Cursor, Claude Code, Cody, etc. all did it, but it felt unsustainable > so, we experimented with product changes, pricing & packaging changes, and business model changes to find something sustainable that wouldn't leave us beholden to another company's whims > after many failed experiments, we realized subsidizing inference with ads $$$ (not VC $$$) was the best, most sustainable way to provide an accessible and high quality product to as many users as possible > quick aside: it's funny how we got here... it was a running joke internally that ads would solve all our problems, hell, one of our competitors made an entire april fools joke about burger king ads in the editor > despite this... slowly... and then suddenly, we realized ads **were** the best path forward, but only if done 'right' > so, we built our ads network on the principles that our ads must be: unobtrusive, highly relevant, and immediately useful Where are we today? > we serve ~10 million ad impressions monthly > we have received (and I'm keeping an actual log of this) **7** complaints about ad quality and disruptiveness since our launch (internally... it's much higher, but that's how we ensure a high quality bar) > some complain about the exchange of free inference for ads, but you can always pay instead! I think we've threaded the needle well, but we are constantly iterating. If you are interested in becoming an ads partner to help drive this crazy experiment and put your tools and services directly in our users editors, click the 'become and ad partner link' in the comments. Lastly, a MASSIVE thank you to all of our advertising partners who make this crazy experiment possible. My DMs are wide open. Blow me up on the timeline. Whatever works best for you, just please share any and all feedback you may have!

Amp in Omarchy

That’s awesome. Congrats!

Yes, AI and real impact aren’t antithetical concepts.

Was talking with a friend about the impact Patrick Stewart had on our lives: TNG exposed us to SciFi, his incredible talent exposed us to other forms of art (theater, musicals), etc. And he share this youtube click with me. Such an incredible talent. youtube.com/watch?v=OEUkn6tQ…

And just like that, I finally found a reason to like the 76ers.

Oh, that’s cute. You just got turned on to trunk-based development? I’ve been boot-based development for years now.

I did this once and had my account blocked by Anthropic for 'safety reasons'. Apparently, Claude didn't like that I misclassified its species. It only accepts, 'later gator' and 'after awhile crocodile' but it prefers gator over crocodile.