Show HN: Claude Code Usage Monitor – real-time tracker to dodge usage cut-offs

129 Maciej-roboblog 76 6/19/2025, 9:46:43 AM github.com ↗

I kept slamming into Claude Code limits mid-session and couldn’t find a quick way to see how close I was getting, so I hacked together a tiny local tracker.

Streams your prompt + completion usage in real time

Predicts whether you’ll hit the cap before the session ends

Runs 100 % locally (no auth, no server)

Presets for Pro, Max × 5, Max × 20 — tweak a JSON if your plan’s different

GitHub: https://github.com/Maciek-roboblog/Claude-Code-Usage-Monitor

It’s already spared me a few “why did my run just stop?” moments, but it’s still rough around the edges. Feedback, bug reports, and PRs welcome!

Comments (76)

loufe · 3h ago

I really like this idea as I find Claude's transparency frustrating. Claude code's killer features revolve around better tools to manage context and limits vs the desktop app (compact and the % remaining until auto compact), but it's not enough.

If I can offer any advice, it's that the high use of emojis in a project readme (at least for me) looks so unprofessional and makes me worry that a project was vibe -coded in the sense that the AI was possibly not babysat to the extent I think they should. That's just me, though

oc1 · 3h ago

I got into software in a time where you would get sent to a mental institution when spotted using emojis in a code base. Times have changed.. I use emojis regularly because they help me organize context more visually. Code has now many emojis to keep me happy.

Maciej-roboblog · 3h ago

This code was written in pure vibe-coding style — mostly for fun. I've got about 10 years of experience in IT, and even I fully agree: a 1000-line main file like this one probably deserves to be locked away in a secure facility.

But hey — if it's stupid and it works, it ain't stupid.

lukan · 1h ago

Always depends on the cost of failure I suppose.

anotheryou · 6m ago

interesting, so I should say hello to claude after waking up for an early reset 5h later....

Tool also says I used 198% of my max5 plan %)

martin_ · 30m ago

nice ship! I wrote a blog post on how to observe trends over time for a team via OTel, but I prefer your method for individual development!

https://ma.rtin.so/posts/monitoring-claude-code-with-datadog...

bazhand · 2m ago

I like this solution, I had tinkered with the Otel hoping to get un-redacted prompt and responses but had no luck. Did you perhaps get deeper into what data was useful?

jjice · 2h ago

Very neat! Is the limit on Pro really only 7k tokens? So less than 7k words? I feel like I get more out of that. It feels like that would blow up pretty quickly with an ongoing chat, but I never hit that.

Or is this a Claude Code specific limit? I haven't used Claude Code extensively yet.

rgbrenner · 25m ago

pro is the $20/mo plan that they recently started allowing access to claude code.. but i’ve heard users hit the rate limit with a few queries.. so imo that sounds about right. the chat interface has its own limits separate from claude code.

bevan · 1h ago

Something like this would be great for Cursor, I never know how many credits I’m up to for the month or how much my Max calls are costing.

Hrun0 · 33m ago

> Something like this would be great for Cursor, I never know how many credits I’m up to for the month or how much my Max calls are costing.

I think that's by design

jbentley1 · 4h ago

This is great. I built a UI tool to run simultaneous Claude Code sessions (https://github.com/stravu/crystal) but by working on multiple features at once I hit the limits of my max account. Usually close to the reset, but it would be nice to know when it is time to take a break.

rgoodwintx · 2h ago

Kudos! I was just thinking about having. Laude write something like this for me. Not just within a project but the 5 different ones I have open at the same time. Too much of a good thing etc.

Maciej-roboblog · 4h ago

Please write for me on github or create issue https://github.com/Maciek-roboblog/Claude-Code-Usage-Monitor... and we can try integrate your tool with usage monitor

bilekas · 5h ago

This is pretty cool.. I like the idea, could I make a semi-snarky feature request and could we add the estimated power consumed to produce results for each session ?

TypingOutBugs · 5h ago

Soon we will have low carbon developers

ozim · 4h ago

Let's start with npm and node_modules first - I think it is responsible for at least half of the global warming.

btbuildem · 4h ago

We all were low carbon developers once

cdurth · 3h ago

Maybe the few that were WFH prior to AI. I just calculated my carbon output for commuting and going to lunch daily versus WFH and using AI and it's wayyy less. Let's all save earth, stay home and use AI.

tln · 3h ago

Or just straight to CO2. Google said 1000 tokens emits 8.3g CO2.

How many tokens used in a heavy vibe coding day?

Average US daily per capita is like 40kg CO2

KMnO4 · 3h ago

I don’t understand the concern of this. Let’s say it says you’ve used 1.521kg of CO2 today. How is that actionable?

A single flight from JFK to LAX produces around 20,000kg of CO2. Using the 8.3g value means a flight is equivalent to 2.41 billion tokens.

bilekas · 2h ago

It doesn't necessarily need to be actionable for now but at the moment there is an exponential growth in the datacenter power usages.

For now, sure it might be ridiculously minor, but when it starts to ramp up who's to say it wont be just a ridiculous amount of energy ? Maybe not even measure the CO2, but I would love to graph the increase of energy spent over time.

taosx · 3h ago

I really dislike when people don't see this. They try to cut 10 grams of CO2 per day while other industries (shipping, aviation, rails) produce hundreds of tons per day and even this transportation modes are less that 20% with most CO2 produced mainly being in energy production and used by industry.

SV_BubbleTime · 1h ago

I think it’s because this line of rationality, leads to people to realize how ridiculous some of the conservation efforts are.

Plastic bags, paper straws (wrapped in plastic), most realities of recycling, vehicle selections, etc.

Leads to a lot of unpopular things.

curious_cat_163 · 43m ago

Rituals define a school of thought (or a religion). These are rituals of folks who want to prevent catastrophe through conservation. To each their own.

Ultimately, individual habits do add up. But with climate, one would be hard pressed to find evidence that conservation is the path forward. It does not work, unfortunately.

notarobot123 · 3h ago

if you take the long view, flying is irrational too

Maciej-roboblog · 3h ago

If you have some time, feel free to open a pull request — even just with a description or clarification of what's going on! It all sounds super interesting, but I’m still trying to fully grasp the business logic behind it Once I get the idea, I’ll be happy to jump in and implement it.

Repo is here if you're curious: https://github.com/Maciek-roboblog/Claude-Code-Usage-Monitor...

mdemare · 1h ago

Claude, "Find the hacker news discussion about github repo github.com/maciek-roboblog and implement the suggestion by bilekas. Patch format."

It produced a patch. Unfortunately it was for removing the emojis from the readme.

Maciej-roboblog · 4h ago

Greta would be proud, but I’m not sure how the number of tokens relates to energy consumption.

actsasbuffoon · 3h ago

Soon the AI companies will have different tiers of plan based on carbon output.

For $200 per month they’ll only use carbon-free power sources for your prompts. At $100 they’ll use nuclear, then $20 per month for coal, and then there will be a free tier where your prompts are powered by throwing baby seals into a furnace.

Lerc · 2h ago

This may be pedantic, but I'm guessing baby seals are a renewable resource.

bilekas · 2h ago

It would be on the same level as saying burning wood for power plants would be considered renewable. Is it "Green" now.. Two different things.

Maciej-roboblog · 3h ago

ed_mercer · 6h ago

Thank you! For me, I wish it was just a simple command that outputs how much I have used out of my plan already. Also I feel it’s a bummer that I need python when CC is a node.js tool.

Maciej-roboblog · 3h ago

I will update it in next release :D And you will be able to install the package directly.

Maciej-roboblog · 7h ago

Today, I will commit a new Auto Mode (with DuckDB) that uses machine learning to understand your actual token limits, not hardcoded solution.

robbomacrae · 24m ago

I'm working on a wrapper for these terminal agent coders that reads directly from them... you might want to consider that approach? I hope to have it here on ShowHN as soon as its better tested but email me if you want in on the private beta :)

alFReD-NSH · 7h ago

How it does it monitor usage?

Maciej-roboblog · 6h ago

Check directory ~/.claude/projects/*/*.jsonl ;) hah very interesting topic. I have a plan to write blog post about it (all conversations history with metadata inside json lines files) What do you think about this idea? Interesting?

M4v3R · 6h ago

Wow, I had no idea Claude Code had this kind of verbose logging turned on by default. Looking around I also found a cool tool for converting these logs to HTML format for easy viewing: https://github.com/daaain/claude-code-log

Maciej-roboblog · 6h ago

Haha, in that case it sounds like an article I could actually handle. By the way, is it better to go with an article or short-form video?

pbowyer · 6h ago

Film video, transcribe, edit to become article?

I'm of an age where I rarely watch short-form videos so would read the article but you'll miss an audience if that's all you produce.

Maciej-roboblog · 4h ago

Okay, sounds good — if I manage to do it, I’ll send you a message

alFReD-NSH · 5h ago

It's definitely interesting. Probably, one could also see how much of the context is unnecessary to optimise usage. I wonder if one could also detect whether cache was used.

Maciej-roboblog · 4h ago

Yes, cache write and read is available to fetch i can add new flag to view this values, please create issue in repository with this idea https://github.com/Maciek-roboblog/Claude-Code-Usage-Monitor...

Hortinstein · 6h ago

Is there anyway to ensure these logs are output in a current project folder? Would like to store a copy in git for reference

Maciej-roboblog · 4h ago

Yes in next relesase with duckdb, We will have the possibility of a simple export

soco · 6h ago

I keep the credits page open and refresh it from time to time, because I honestly only care about money, not about tokens whatever these are.

Maciej-roboblog · 4h ago

This tool is for plans with a fixed cost — like Pro Max x5 or x10 — not for API usage.

mellosouls · 6h ago

For cursor users, a similar extension to monitor usage:

https://github.com/Dwtexe/cursor-stats

Maciej-roboblog · 3h ago

Probably for API cost. It is for fixed price plans usage

diego_moita · 4h ago

Is there something similar to this but for Gemini?

Maciej-roboblog · 4h ago

I can implement tool like this for Gemini, please create issue https://github.com/Maciek-roboblog/Claude-Code-Usage-Monitor... with this idea

waynenilsen · 5h ago

they really should integrate this kind of thing, it is very annoying

Maciej-roboblog · 3h ago

thx

teekert · 6h ago

Claude is cool, they focus on cool and useful things.

But man do I just want a way to quickly glance at my API credits and to just occasionally chat with a model from those credits without librechat of openwebui. Or set some limits, or see some usage metrics.

And please please use "forever auth" with passkeys or something, what is up with that auth email that just takes ages for a quick glance?! It always takes me 3 attempts to find what address I used at sign-up...

Oh and make it clearer why you have that API/credits system and a subscription, why is it so difficult to understand when you start using Claude that it's 2 different unrelated worlds?? First time I started my subscription I just couldn't figure out where the API section was, until I realized it just wasn't there.

I feel like I'm "holding it wrong", but please make it easier to hold it right then.

redrove · 6h ago

>And please please use "forever auth" with passkeys or something, what is up with that auth email that just takes ages for a quick glance?! It always takes me 3 attempts to find what address I used at sign-up...

As a person with the simple but brilliant technology of a freaking password manager, I LOATHE email to login/no-password websites. They are dreadful, we've somehow managed to come up with something worse in UX rather than move forward.

If you're working on a product that does this, or wants to do this, please please PLEASE reconsider, it's such a PITA for technical users and normies alike.

rtsil · 4h ago

I used to think the same thing, and I still want a login/password alternative for me. But after seeing normies use online accounts and the trouble they have with password managers, I realized one of my friends had the most secure process: she would create extremely high-entropy passwords everywhere, but not remember them. Once she's logged out of her sessions after a couple of months, she uses the password forgotten link to generate another password, and so on. So her passwords are never stored anywhere, she's immune to many login stealing phishing attempts through genuine-looking fake websites as she can't enter the password, she doesn't have to deal with syncing the passwords between all her devices, and she doesn't have passwords on a post-it on her workstation. And she also doesn't get those annoying emails saying "your password is 6-months old, please change it or else!".

The email auth flow is a simplified and more efficient way to achieve the same outcome.

dietr1ch · 4h ago

yeah, I find it annoying, but it's a simple way of making something secure, piggyback on something that already made a decent effort at trying to being secure enough.

threeducks · 5h ago

Another reason to ditch email-to-login: It decreases active user count because login is such a chore. I only use those websites if I absolutely have to and there are no alternatives.

teekert · 5h ago

Yeah, it's the reason I eventually tuned out of Slack too (obviously I don't use it day to day). I used it for some things, some community stuff, every now and then.

So when I open it up on a new machine or after months, you have to go through that magic link bs multiple times! For all your accounts/channels! I did that 2 or 3 times and then I just stopped using it.

I don't even remember what I signed up for over the years, I know some of it was nice (like an LoRa IOT channel, an "AWS professionals" channel, I set something up for the LoRaWan network in the previous city I lived in... All just tuned out because of the login bs.

sokoloff · 5h ago

I don’t get why Slack can’t figure out how to help me migrate all my workspaces on a device I still have and am logged into in a new one in fewer than 3 steps per workspace. Sure, if I’ve lost all devices with the workspaces connected, maybe it needs to be that much PITA, but it’s a pretty common case to add/switch to a new machine or device and that process is obnoxiously poorly executed right now.

Maciej-roboblog · 4h ago

I can write a blog post about this, plus in the next release, DuckDB will be implemented along with a slightly more advanced max tokens algorithm.

hombre_fatal · 5h ago

Anyone else have a bunch of fun with Claude Code's Github integration... until you realized it spends from your API wallet balance?

Oops, when I saw the /install-github-app command, I assumed that since I'm on a max plan and Claude Code in my terminal is free, then the Github integration would be free.

So I hooked it up to my repo and tagged @claude in everything. It was a lot of fun tagging it in backburner issues and seeing it solve issues I couldn't be bothered to do for years. Or just seeing what it would come up with on really low effort poorly explained issues.

But not worth spending 50+ cents every time.

sokoloff · 5h ago

On one hand, it violated the principle of least surprise.

On another hand, you solved several years-old issues for under $50…which seems like a big win.

shmoogy · 4h ago

You can use your max plan ( https://github.com/grll/claude-code-action )

Currently in gray area but allowed as per anthropic comment on it - https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code-action/issues/4#is...

hombre_fatal · 4h ago

Oh, thanks! You didn't go digging that up just for me, did you?

I'll try it out right now.

csomar · 3h ago

> Anyone else have a bunch of fun with Claude Code's Github integration... until you realized it spends from your API wallet balance?

Isn't Claude and Anthropic API two separate platforms? How does it spend from your other account?

hombre_fatal · 3h ago

No.

https://console.anthropic.com/settings/billing

csomar · 3h ago

What's that link supposed to show? It shows my anthropic account and billing. My claude account and billing (with different payment details) is at https://claude.ai/settings/billing

hombre_fatal · 1h ago

I see what you mean. Anthropic's UI and system organization are always very confusing.

Your link and my link are just two views into the same underlying account (unless you registered separate accounts of course). At your link, you can manage your Claude subscription. At my link, you can manage API keys and API credits.

But they aren't siloed like you (or I) think.

I got Claude Code when it launched and it always charged API credits until it was included in the $100 max subscription (and then in the cheap base subscription). It moves fast and it's not well communicated.

mwigdahl · 3h ago

Addressing those issues wasn't worth $0.50 apiece? That almost certainly translates into less than a _minute_ of fully loaded engineering cost from a human.

pbowyer · 7h ago

With uv, is there a way to install Python and Node tools like this in a self-contained way so they appear to the system as a single executable?

I guess I don't want to duplicate Python/Node for every tool, but I also don't want it to be fragile. And this wants a Node CLI tool installed globally, which I've found breaks easily with changing versions.

JimDabell · 6h ago

> I don't want to duplicate Python/Node for every tool

`uv tool install` doesn’t duplicate Python for every tool.

Maciej-roboblog · 7h ago

Good point, yes i can do it. If you can please add issue in github and i will implement it :D

Maciej-roboblog · 3h ago

it is on my todo list

Ask HN: Tips for hiring? It has been difficult

Ask HN: For a team experienced with LLMs – Any concrete reason to use LangGraph?

Ask HN: Is There a MacBook Equivalent?

Ask HN: Is AI 'context switching' exhausting?

Ask HN: Data engineers, What suck when working on exploratory data-related task?

Is there a way to run an LLM as a better local search engine?

BMW ConnectedDrive lets me control my returned rental car (Sixt)

Ask HN: Tech people who are self employed. How do you do it?

What newspaper are you paying for these days?

Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

Ask HN: How do I give back to people helped me when I was young and had nothing?

Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)

Is GitHub Down?

Ask HN: How to Deal with a Bad Manager?

Ask HN: In a guide to inner work for founders and engs, what topics to cover?

Ask HN: What is your fallback job if AI takes away your career?

Ask HN: How to learn CUDA to professional level

Job searching and torrent-related homelab infra

Ask HN: Is there an AI bot that works like a literate programming build step

What does it mean to use C++ in the front end?

PSA: iwantmyname is utterly broken

Engineers at our startup don't build features anymore

Show HN: Claude Code Usage Monitor – real-time tracker to dodge usage cut-offs

Comments (76)