Real-time usage monitor for Claude Code — session limits, weekly limits, cost tracking, peak hours, and 10 themes with animations. All in your status bar.
What is this?
A single-file Python status bar for Claude Code that shows everything you need at a glance — no API key required, zero dependencies, works with your existing Claude Code subscription.
10 built-in themes with colour-coded bars that shift green → yellow → red as usage increases
Rainbow animation — flowing gradient that shifts on every refresh
Automatic update notifications for both claude-pulse and Claude Code
Session ━━━───────── 27% 2h 53m | Weekly ━━━━━━━━━─── 73% R:Fri 3pm | Context ━━━━──────── 35% | $38.75 | +142 -37 | In Peak ⚡2x 2h 54m left (1pm-7pm) | Opus 4.6 | [\] 320 tools 51m | main
Features
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Session & Weekly bars | Colour-coded progress bars (green → yellow → red) for 5-hour session and 7-day weekly limits |
| Context window | Live context usage percentage with pressure warnings at 70%/90% |
| Cost tracking | Real-time session cost in your local currency (USD, GBP, EUR, + 25 more) with live exchange rates |
| Peak hours | Configurable indicator for Anthropic's peak consumption window — red In Peak ⚡ when limits burn faster, yellow when approaching, green Off-Peak ✓ when limits stretch further. Full and minimal display modes |
| Live heartbeat | Spinning indicator with tool count and elapsed time (via PostToolUse hook) |
| Git branch | Current branch name always visible |
| Model display | Shows which model is active (Opus, Sonnet, Haiku) |
| 10 themes | default, ocean, sunset, mono, neon, pride, frost, ember, candy, rainbow |
| 5 animation modes | off, rainbow, pulse, glow, shift — each visually distinct |
| 8 bar styles | classic, block, shade, pipe, dot, square, star, braille |
| Lines changed | Shows +42 -7 in green/red — lines added and removed this session, read from stdin |
| Cumulative cost | Opt-in widget showing total API-equivalent cost across all sessions (cached, 5-min refresh) |
| Widget priorities | Every widget has a priority number — reorder them with --priority model=5,cost=15 |
| Focus timer | Built-in focus timer — --focus start 25 shows countdown in the status bar |
| Auto-updates | Notifies when a new version of claude-pulse or Claude Code is available |
| Staleness indicator | Shows data age when cached data is old |
| Zero API calls | Reads rate limits directly from Claude Code's stdin (v2.1.80+) — no OAuth, no rate limiting |
Quick Start
Plugin marketplace (recommended)
/plugin marketplace add NoobyGains/claude-pulse
/plugin install claude-pulse
Then run /pulse to configure. Restart Claude Code.
One-liner install
macOS / Linux:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NoobyGains/claude-pulse/main/install.sh | bash
Windows (PowerShell):
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NoobyGains/claude-pulse/main/install.ps1 | iex
Manual install
git clone https://github.com/NoobyGains/claude-pulse.git ~/.claude-pulse
python3 ~/.claude-pulse/claude_status.py --install
Restart Claude Code. That's it.