Sponsored access

What sponsoring does

Normally a visitor pays for a conversation with their own credits. Sponsoring moves credits from your account into a budget that belongs to one avatar. Sessions with that avatar then draw on the budget first, so visitors can talk without spending anything — on the public share link, through your API key, or (if you enable it) without an Atmee account at all.

Manage it under Studio → Billing → Sponsored access: one card lists every avatar you have funded with what its budget has left, and Sponsor an avatar / Edit open the dialog with the controls below. Everything there is also available through the API (further down).

Controls

Control	What it does
Sponsored access (on/off)	Turning it on reserves credits from your balance for this avatar. Turning it off returns the unused budget to your balance instantly.
Budget	Credits reserved for the avatar; one credit buys about one visitor minute. Raising it moves credits from your balance (paid subscription credits and add-on credits are eligible; free-plan accounts can only sponsor from add-on credits). Lowering it returns the difference — except credits reserved by a session running right now, which come back when it ends.
Max session length (min)	The most one sponsored session may run. 0 = unlimited; the budget is then the only limit.
When the budget runs out	Pause visitor chat — nobody can start a sponsored session until you top up. Keep going, spending from my balance — sessions continue on your account credits. Anonymous visitors and sessions through your key stop under Pause either way, because they have no balance of their own.
Auto top-up	Refills the budget by a fixed amount (Top up by) whenever it falls below a threshold (When it falls below), from your account balance.
Let visitors chat without an account	Enables anonymous access on the share link (below). Needs a public or unlisted avatar; the dialog offers to make it reachable.
Daily minutes per visitor	Best-effort per-visitor cap for anonymous sessions. 0 = the budget is the only limit.

Anonymous visitors on the share link

With Let visitors chat without an account on, a logged-out person who opens your avatar's share link (https://www.atmee.ai/u/<you>/<avatar>, shown in Studio → Manage) gets the conversation directly — no sign-up, no login. Their session is funded only by the sponsor budget and stops when it is exhausted.

Because there is no account, the daily minutes per visitor cap is keyed on a browser cookie: it stops casual overuse but a determined visitor can clear cookies. The budget and the per-session cap are what actually bound your spend — set them accordingly.

The avatar must be public or unlisted; private avatars never allow anonymous access.

What visitors see when the budget is empty

• Share link, logged out: a message that the avatar is currently unavailable.
• Share link, logged in with Visitors pay: the session continues on the visitor's credits.
• Your own site: /v1/session answers 402 sponsor_budget_exhausted. Show your own "come back later" state and, if you want zero downtime, turn on Auto top-up.

Via the API

A key with billing:write can do everything the Studio row does. Amounts are in microcredits (1 credit = 100 microcredits).

Call	Does
GET /v1/avatars/{avatarId}/sponsor	Read the budget balance and the settings above.
PATCH /v1/avatars/{avatarId}/sponsor	Change caps, run-out behaviour, auto top-up, anonymous access.
POST /v1/avatars/{avatarId}/sponsor/grants	Add funds (idempotent with an Idempotency-Key header).
POST /v1/avatars/{avatarId}/sponsor/withdrawals	Return unspent budget to your account.

A manifest passed to POST /v1/avatars can also carry a sponsor block to fund the avatar the moment it is created — see Create an avatar.

Where the money goes

Sponsored sessions are charged at the standard per-minute rate and are not creator earnings — you are paying for people to talk to your own avatar. Sponsoring and creator monetization are mutually exclusive: a sponsored avatar can't be monetized and a monetized avatar can't be sponsored. Switching one on asks you to confirm turning the other off (monetizing returns the remaining sponsored credits to your balance).