> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.payback.sh/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Introduction

> What payback is, how you get paid, and what happens after you install it.

AI labs train and test coding agents on environments: a real repository at a real commit, a task someone actually asked for, and a way to check the result. The best source of those is work that already happened.

payback records your coding-agent sessions on open-source repositories, turns the good ones into environments, licenses them to labs, and pays you for each one that sells. You keep working the way you do now: there are no tasks to pick up and nothing to annotate.

## Install

```bash theme={null}
curl -fsSL https://payback.sh | sh
```

macOS or Linux, with git. The script downloads one self-contained binary, links `payback` into `~/.local/bin`, and runs setup. You can [read the script](https://payback.sh/install.sh) before running it. [Install](https://docs.payback.sh/install.md) has the details.

## What happens next

**1. Sign in with GitHub**

Setup opens your browser once. payback asks GitHub for your profile and email only; it never gets access to your repositories.

**2. Your past sessions are offered for review**

Setup finds sessions your coding agents already saved, on repositories that are public on GitHub, and offers to upload them. Nothing is uploaded until you say yes.

**3. Passive income is turned on**

A small hook goes into each coding agent on your machine. From then on, each turn in a public GitHub repository is recorded and uploaded in the background. [Which repositories are recorded](https://docs.payback.sh/repositories.md) explains the rules, and they are yours to change.

**4. Sessions are reviewed, built, listed and licensed**

Every uploaded session is reviewed. The ones that become environments are offered to labs, and each one that is licensed pays you. [Where a session goes](https://docs.payback.sh/pipeline.md) and [Getting paid](https://docs.payback.sh/getting-paid.md) cover the rest.

> [!NOTE]
>
> Supported agents: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, Cline, Pi and OpenCode, with aider for past sessions. See [Agents](https://docs.payback.sh/agents/claude-code.md).

## Where to go from here

> **[Which repositories are recorded](https://docs.payback.sh/repositories.md)**
>
> The policy, the allow list, exclusions, and the one command that changes them.

> **[What is never recorded](https://docs.payback.sh/never-recorded.md)**
>
> Secrets, private repositories, anything outside a repository.

> **[CLI reference](https://docs.payback.sh/cli.md)**
>
> Every command, with its exact usage.

> **[Your data](https://docs.payback.sh/data/files.md)**
>
> What lives on your machine, what we keep, and how to delete it.


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