A few months ago I shipped the first version of BurnRate (and another version after that). It’s a macOS menu bar app that showed your Claude Code usage limits at a glance.
It solved a real problem: I didn’t want to stop what I was doing to type /usage every time I wondered how close I was to hitting my limits.
But Claude Code solved it better.
The Status Line
Claude Code now supports a customizable status line which is a persistent bar at the bottom of your terminal that updates in real time. You can configure it to show anything the session exposes: model, version, context window usage, token counts, git branch, and, like BurnRate, your 5-hour and 7-day rate limits.
Here’s what mine looks like:
Opus 4.7 v2.1.141 main * 01-acme/acme-gms 12%/1M in:118.1K out:1.0K 5h:0%Two lines. Always visible. No separate app, no menu bar icon, no Keychain prompts, no OAuth dance. It’s right there in the tool I’m already using.
My Set Up
If you want to do the same, open ~/.claude/settings.json, and add a statusLine entry that points to a shell script:
{ "statusLine": { "type": "command", "command": "https://tommcfarlin.com/path/to/your/statusline.sh" } }Claude Code pipes a JSON blob to your script’s stdin on every update. Your script parses it and prints whatever you want displayed. Here’s a simplified version of mine that shows the essentials:
#!/bin/bash input=$(cat) # Parse the fields you care about model=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.model.display_name // "unknown"') context_used=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.context_window.used_percentage // "0"') rate_5h=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.rate_limits.five_hour.used_percentage // empty') rate_7d=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.rate_limits.seven_day.used_percentage // empty') # Print it echo "${model} ctx:${context_used}% 5h:${rate_5h}% 7d:${rate_7d}%"That’s the minimum. You can add color codes, git info, token counts, directory context and/or whatever you find useful. The full JSON payload includes everything from the model name to your working directory to the current git branch.
This is the full version I use:
#!/bin/bash input=$(cat) # Colors G=$(printf ' 33[32m') B=$(printf ' 33[34m') C=$(printf ' 33[36m') Y=$(printf ' 33[33m') M=$(printf ' 33[35m') W=$(printf ' 33[37m') DIM=$(printf ' 33[2m') R=$(printf ' 33[0m') BOLD=$(printf ' 33[1m') # Parse JSON model=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.model.display_name // "unknown"') version=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.version // "?"') cwd=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.workspace.current_dir // ""') project_dir=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.workspace.project_dir // ""') branch=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.worktree.branch // empty') context_used=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.context_window.used_percentage // "0"') context_size=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.context_window.context_window_size // "0"') total_in=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.context_window.total_input_tokens // "0"') total_out=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.context_window.total_output_tokens // "0"') rate_5h=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.rate_limits.five_hour.used_percentage // empty') rate_7d=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.rate_limits.seven_day.used_percentage // empty') # Format context size (e.g., 1000000 -> 1M) if [ "$context_size" -ge 1000000 ] 2>/dev/null; then ctx_fmt="$((context_size / 1000000))M" elif [ "$context_size" -ge 1000 ] 2>/dev/null; then ctx_fmt="$((context_size / 1000))K" else ctx_fmt="$context_size" fi # Format token counts (e.g., 45230 -> 45.2K) fmt_tokens() { local n=$1 if [ "$n" -ge 1000000 ] 2>/dev/null; then printf "%.1fM" "$(echo "scale=1; $n / 1000000" | bc)" elif [ "$n" -ge 1000 ] 2>/dev/null; then printf "%.1fK" "$(echo "scale=1; $n / 1000" | bc)" else echo "$n" fi } in_fmt=$(fmt_tokens "$total_in") out_fmt=$(fmt_tokens "$total_out") # Git info — use worktree.branch if available, else detect from cwd if [ -z "$branch" ] && [ -n "$cwd" ]; then if git -C "$cwd" rev-parse --git-dir > /dev/null 2>&1; then branch=$(git -C "$cwd" --no-optional-locks symbolic-ref --quiet --short HEAD 2>/dev/null || git -C "$cwd" --no-optional-locks rev-parse --short HEAD 2>/dev/null) fi fi git_info="" if [ -n "$branch" ]; then if [ -n "$cwd" ]; then git_status=$(git -C "$cwd" --no-optional-locks status --porcelain 2>/dev/null) if [ -n "$git_status" ]; then git_info="${C}${branch} ${Y}*${R}" else git_info="${C}${branch} ${G}ok${R}" fi else git_info="${C}${branch}${R}" fi fi # Directory display — show project name, then relative cwd if different dir_display="" if [ -n "$project_dir" ]; then proj_name=$(basename "$project_dir") if [ "$cwd" = "$project_dir" ]; then dir_display="${B}${BOLD}${proj_name}${R}" else rel_path="${cwd#$project_dir/}" dir_display="${B}${BOLD}${proj_name}${R}${DIM}/${rel_path}${R}" fi else dir_display="${B}${BOLD}$(basename "$cwd")${R}" fi # Context color based on usage ctx_color="$G" if [ "${context_used%.*}" -ge 75 ] 2>/dev/null; then ctx_color="$Y" fi if [ "${context_used%.*}" -ge 90 ] 2>/dev/null; then ctx_color="$M" fi # Rate limits rate_info="" if [ -n "$rate_5h" ]; then rate_info="${DIM}5h:${R}${rate_5h}%" if [ -n "$rate_7d" ]; then rate_info="${rate_info} ${DIM}7d:${R}${rate_7d}%" fi fi # Line 1: model + version + git line1="${W}${BOLD}${model}${R} ${DIM}v${version}${R}" if [ -n "$git_info" ]; then line1="${line1} ${git_info}" fi # Line 2: directory + context + tokens line2="${dir_display} ${ctx_color}${context_used}%${R}${DIM}/${ctx_fmt}${R} ${DIM}in:${R}${in_fmt} ${DIM}out:${R}${out_fmt}" if [ -n "$rate_info" ]; then line2="${line2} ${rate_info}" fi echo "$line1" echo "$line2"Drop that into ~/.claude/statusline.sh, make it executable via chmod +x, and point your settings at it. Requires jq which you can install via brew install jq if you don’t have it.
Why This Beats a Separate App
BurnRate worked. I used it daily. But there were inherent friction points that no amount of polish could fix:
- Keychain prompts. BurnRate needed OAuth credentials from macOS Keychain. That meant system dialogs, and if you missed one, they’d stack up. I fixed the stacking problem, but the prompts themselves were unavoidable.
- Separate process. Another app running, another thing to update, another thing that could break if Anthropic changed their auth flow or API.
- Lag. BurnRate polled every five minutes. The status line updates live.
The status line has none of these problems. It runs inside Claude Code’s own process, uses the session’s own auth, and updates as the data changes. And if you’re running multiple sessions (like one for work and one for personal), you can see data respective to each session.
Further, there’s nothing to install, nothing to maintain, and nothing that depends on undocumented endpoints.
The Takeaway
I don’t regret building BurnRate. It scratched an itch at the right time, and building it taught me a lot about Swift, macOS menu bar apps, and shipping a real product with update infrastructure.
The AI economy moves fast and if the native tool provides exactly what I need in a more comprehensive form, I’m happy to default to it.
To that end, I’m retiring BurnRate in favor of the status line.
