Monitor Your Mac Menu Bar for Claude Code Quota! Introducing “claude-quota” for Developers
📰 News Overview
- Visualize your Claude Code usage limits: The “claude-quota” tool is out, letting you see your Claude Code usage for both the 5-hour window and weekly limits in a nifty gauge right on your macOS menu bar.
- Real-time notifications: The gauge changes colors based on your consumption—green, orange (70%+), and red (90%+). If you hit the limit, a countdown to reset is displayed.
- Secure design: No user passwords required! It reads the OAuth token from the macOS Keychain and directly references the internal usage endpoint of Claude Code.
💡 Key Points
- Multi-account support: Automatically detects setting directories under
~/.claude, allowing you to monitor multiple accounts—like work and personal—simultaneously with individual gauges. - Instant access to detailed data: From the dropdown in the menu bar, you can see limits for each model (varies by plan), remaining usage credits, reset times, and more all in one glance.
- Easy setup process: Utilizes SwiftBar, and if you have Homebrew installed, you can get it up and running with a single
curlcommand.
🦈 Shark’s Eye (Curator’s Perspective)
What’s really impressive about this tool is its practical approach of hitting Claude Code’s private endpoints to pull information! There’s nothing worse than suddenly being told “you’ve hit your limit” when you’re deep in development—it’s enough to make even a shark tear up! But with this gauge, you can strategize: “I’m close to the limit, let’s wrap up this task first!” Especially noteworthy is how it manages not just the 5-hour cap but also the heavier “weekly limit” in a separate black gauge, showing it understands the psyche of heavy users well. Plus, by handling the OAuth token in a read-only manner, it ensures security while avoiding logout risks—major kudos there!
🚀 What’s Next?
Currently, it relies on private endpoints, meaning there’s a chance it could become temporarily unavailable if Claude Code rolls out updates. However, since this feature directly impacts developer productivity, it’s likely that Anthropic will provide a similar dashboard or notification feature officially in the future—or even offer quota information via API.
💬 A Final Word from HaruShark
Say goodbye to those anxious days of worrying about AI “running out of gas”! Keep an eye on that menu bar and code at lightning speed! 🦈🔥
📚 Terminology
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Claude Code: An AI agent provided by Anthropic that operates in the terminal, autonomously creating and debugging code.
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SwiftBar: An open-source customization tool for macOS that displays the results of scripts in the menu bar.
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OAuth Token: A digital key that allows access to specific features (in this case, usage monitoring) without revealing the user’s password.
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Source: Show HN: macOS menu bar gauges for your Claude Code quota