Claude HUD

Skill by ara.so — Daily 2026 Skills collection.

Claude HUD is a Claude Code plugin that adds a persistent statusline to your terminal showing real-time context window usage, active tool calls, running subagents, and todo progress — always visible below your input prompt.

What It Does

Feature	Description
Context health	Visual bar showing how full your context window is (green → yellow → red)
Tool activity	Live display of file reads, edits, and searches as they happen
Agent tracking	Shows which subagents are running and what they're doing
Todo progress	Real-time task completion tracking
Usage limits	Claude subscriber rate limit consumption
Git status	Current branch, dirty state, ahead/behind remote

Requirements

Claude Code v1.0.80+
Node.js 18+ or Bun

Installation

Run these commands inside a Claude Code session:

Step 1: Add the marketplace

/plugin marketplace add jarrodwatts/claude-hud

Step 2: Install the plugin

/plugin install claude-hud

Linux users: If you get EXDEV: cross-device link not permitted, set TMPDIR first:
mkdir -p ~/.cache/tmp && TMPDIR=~/.cache/tmp claude

Step 3: Configure the statusline

/claude-hud:setup

Windows users: If setup reports no JavaScript runtime, install Node.js LTS first:
winget install OpenJS.NodeJS.LTS

Step 4: Restart Claude Code to load the new statusLine config.

What You See

Default 2-line layout

[Opus] │ my-project git:(main*)
Context █████░░░░░ 45% │ Usage ██░░░░░░░░ 25% (1h 30m / 5h)

With optional lines enabled

[Opus] │ my-project git:(main*)
Context █████░░░░░ 45% │ Usage ██░░░░░░░░ 25% (1h 30m / 5h)
◐ Edit: auth.ts | ✓ Read ×3 | ✓ Grep ×2
◐ explore [haiku]: Finding auth code (2m 15s)
▸ Fix authentication bug (2/5)

Configuration

Interactive configuration (recommended)

/claude-hud:configure

This opens a guided flow with preset options:

Preset	Shows
Full	Everything — tools, agents, todos, git, usage, duration
Essential	Activity lines + git, minimal clutter
Minimal	Model name and context bar only

Manual configuration

Edit ~/.claude/plugins/claude-hud/config.json directly:

{
  "lineLayout": "expanded",
  "pathLevels": 2,
  "elementOrder": ["project", "context", "usage", "tools", "agents", "todos"],
  "gitStatus": {
    "enabled": true,
    "showDirty": true,
    "showAheadBehind": true,
    "showFileStats": false
  },
  "display": {
    "showModel": true,
    "showContextBar": true,
    "contextValue": "percent",
    "showUsage": true,
    "usageBarEnabled": true,
    "showTools": true,
    "showAgents": true,
    "showTodos": true,
    "showDuration": false,
    "showSpeed": false,
    "showConfigCounts": false,
    "showMemoryUsage": false,
    "showSessionName": false,
    "showClaudeCodeVersion": false,
    "sevenDayThreshold": 80,
    "showTokenBreakdown": true
  },
  "colors": {
    "context": "green",
    "usage": "brightBlue",
    "warning": "yellow",
    "usageWarning": "brightMagenta",
    "critical": "red",
    "model": "cyan",
    "project": "yellow",
    "git": "magenta",
    "gitBranch": "cyan",
    "label": "dim",
    "custom": "208"
  }
}

Key Configuration Options

Layout

{
  "lineLayout": "expanded",   // "expanded" (multi-line) or "compact" (single line)
  "pathLevels": 1             // 1-3 directory levels in project path
}

Path level examples:

1 → [Opus] │ my-project git:(main)
2 → [Opus] │ apps/my-project git:(main)
3 → [Opus] │ dev/apps/my-project git:(main)

Context display formats

{
  "display": {
    "contextValue": "percent"    // "45%"
    // "contextValue": "tokens"  // "45k/200k"
    // "contextValue": "remaining" // "55% remaining"
    // "contextValue": "both"    // "45% (45k/200k)"
  }
}

Element ordering (expanded layout)

{
  "elementOrder": ["project", "context", "usage", "memory", "environment", "tools", "agents", "todos"]
}

Omit any entry from the array to hide it entirely.

Git status options

{
  "gitStatus": {
    "enabled": true,
    "showDirty": true,         // "main*" for uncommitted changes
    "showAheadBehind": true,   // "main ↑2 ↓1"
    "showFileStats": true      // "main* !3 +1 ?2" (modified/added/deleted/untracked)
  }
}

Colors

Supported values: named colors (dim, red, green, yellow, magenta, cyan, brightBlue, brightMagenta), 256-color numbers (0-255), or hex (#rrggbb).

{
  "colors": {
    "context": "#00FF88",
    "model": "208",
    "project": "#FF6600"
  }
}

How It Works

Claude HUD uses Claude Code's native statusline API — no separate window, no tmux needed:

Claude Code → stdin JSON → claude-hud → stdout → terminal statusline
           ↘ transcript JSONL (tools, agents, todos parsed live)

Token data comes directly from Claude Code (not estimated)
Scales with reported context window size including 1M-context sessions
Parses transcript for tool/agent activity
Updates every ~300ms

Common Patterns

Minimal setup for focused work

{
  "lineLayout": "compact",
  "display": {
    "showModel": true,
    "showContextBar": true,
    "contextValue": "percent",
    "showUsage": false,
    "showTools": false,
    "showAgents": false,
    "showTodos": false
  }
}

Full monitoring setup

{
  "lineLayout": "expanded",
  "pathLevels": 2,
  "gitStatus": {
    "enabled": true,
    "showDirty": true,
    "showAheadBehind": true,
    "showFileStats": true
  },
  "display": {
    "showTools": true,
    "showAgents": true,
    "showTodos": true,
    "showDuration": true,
    "showMemoryUsage": true,
    "showConfigCounts": true,
    "contextValue": "both",
    "showTokenBreakdown": true
  }
}

Always show 7-day usage

{
  "display": {
    "showUsage": true,
    "sevenDayThreshold": 0
  }
}

Output: Context █████░░░░░ 45% │ Usage ██░░░░░░░░ 25% (1h 30m / 5h) | ██████████ 85% (2d / 7d)

Troubleshooting

HUD not appearing after setup

Fully restart Claude Code (quit and re-run claude in terminal)
On macOS, ensure you've fully quit the app, not just closed the window

Config not applying

Check for JSON syntax errors — invalid JSON silently falls back to defaults
Validate: cat ~/.claude/plugins/claude-hud/config.json | node -e "JSON.parse(require('fs').readFileSync('/dev/stdin','utf8'))"
Delete config and run /claude-hud:configure to regenerate

Git status missing

Verify you're in a git repository (git status)
Ensure gitStatus.enabled is not false in config

Tool/agent/todo lines not showing

These are hidden by default — enable with showTools, showAgents, showTodos
Lines only render when there's active activity to display

Usage limits not showing

Requires a Claude subscriber account (not API key only)
AWS Bedrock users see Bedrock label; usage is managed in AWS console instead
Usage data may be empty until after the first model response in a new session
Older Claude Code versions that don't emit rate_limits won't show subscriber usage

Linux cross-device error on install

mkdir -p ~/.cache/tmp && TMPDIR=~/.cache/tmp claude
# Then run /plugin install claude-hud inside that session

Windows: no JavaScript runtime found

winget install OpenJS.NodeJS.LTS
# Restart shell, then run /claude-hud:setup again

Plugin Commands Reference

Command	Description
`/plugin marketplace add jarrodwatts/claude-hud`	Register the plugin source
`/plugin install claude-hud`	Install the plugin
`/claude-hud:setup`	Initial setup wizard, writes `statusLine` config
`/claude-hud:configure`	Interactive configuration with preview

Config File Location

~/.claude/plugins/claude-hud/config.json

claude-hud-statusline