# Choose where the line appears

> Awaitful shows one sponsored line while your agent thinks: in the status bar, the thinking line, a chat banner, or your terminal. You choose.

- Source: https://awaitful.com/docs/choose-your-surfaces
- Updated: August 7, 2026

A surface is where the sponsored line appears while your agent thinks. There are four, from a plain status bar item to a line drawn inside Claude Code's own thinking indicator. You choose; nothing beyond the default status bar activates without your explicit consent.

*Figure: Only the status bar is on by default. Nothing else turns on without your OK, surface by surface.*

## The four surfaces

-   **Status bar** - the default, always available. A spinner and the line in your editor's status bar while the agent works. It modifies nothing.
-   **Thinking line** - the line rendered over Claude Code's own spinner row, where your eyes already are. This is a patch surface: it changes two files inside Claude Code, so it asks for consent first and is engineered to fail safe - see [Your editor never breaks](https://awaitful.com/docs/editor-safety).
-   **Chat banner** - the same patch, different rendering: a slim banner docked above Claude Code's composer, with a few glow styles to pick from. The thinking line and the chat banner are alternatives; one webview surface runs at a time.
-   **Terminal status line** - a line in Claude Code's terminal status area, alongside whichever editor surface you use. Off by default; turn it on from the panel. It preserves your existing status line and restores it when idle. Works on macOS and Linux shells.

## How the line is marked

Every surface marks the line as sponsored: in the editor, hover it and the tooltip says so, and on every surface a spinner or marker precedes the text so a sponsored line never masquerades as agent output. The house fallback goes further and declares that it bills nobody and pays nothing - see [House ads and quiet markets](https://awaitful.com/docs/house-ads).

## Making it yours

Each ad format is styled on its own page in the panel: open a format to turn it on, and the controls for how it looks are right there. What you can change depends on what that format actually draws, so nothing offers you a setting it cannot honour.

-   **Spinner** - the animation before the line, with eleven choices. Every format has one. Choosing `None` keeps a static marker, so the line is still visibly marked.
-   **Advertiser's logo** - on the thinking line and the chat banner, which are the two formats that can draw an image at all. Many ads have no logo; turning this on never invents one, and the line itself always shows.
-   **Glow and outline** - the chat banner only, since it is the only format with an edge to colour.

These are kept per format, not once for everything: you can run a restrained spinner inline in the thinking line and a livelier one in the chat banner. Changing any of it restyles a live ad in place - it never resets the clock on [what counts as an impression](https://awaitful.com/docs/verified-impressions).

**Whichever surface, the money rule is the same**

A line earns only while it shows and the agent is genuinely thinking. The editor surfaces also verify the window itself is on screen; the terminal cannot prove that, and carries the lowest rate for exactly that reason.