Claude Code Statusline
Claude Code Statusline: When 215 Developers Said Yes
It started with frustration. Pure, unadulterated frustration.
Im sitting there with Claude Code open, watching it churn through some complex refactoring task. And I have no idea whats happening. Is it thinking? Is it stuck? How many tokens am I burning? When does my conversation block reset? The terminal just sits there, blinking cursor, zero feedback.
So I did what any developer does at 2am — I started hacking.
The Problem Nobody Was Solving
Claude Code is incredible. But the default terminal experience? Minimal. You get your prompt, you get responses, and thats about it. No metrics. No cost tracking. No context about your session. Just vibes.
I wanted more. I wanted to see my burn rate in real-time. I wanted git branch info without typing git status every five seconds. I wanted to know when my conversation block was about to reset so I could plan my prompts accordingly. Basic stuff that should exist but didnt.
So I built it. What started as a hacky 50-line bash script became... well, something much bigger.
The Architecture That Emerged
The first version was ugly. One massive bash file, 3,930 lines of spaghetti. It worked, barely. Then I looked at it and thought — this is embarrassing. If anyone sees this code, my reputation is done.
Complete rewrite. Modular architecture. Eleven specialized modules handling distinct concerns:
- Core utilities and string manipulation
- Security and input validation
- TOML configuration parsing
- Theme management with color systems
- Git operations and repository monitoring
- MCP server health checks
- Cost tracking via ccusage integration
- Islamic prayer times (yes, really)
- Display formatting and layout
- Intelligent caching layer
- Main orchestrator (now just 338 lines)
The result? Sub-50ms statusline responses. Thats faster than most people can perceive. The caching layer alone reduced external command execution by 70-90%. Every git status, every API call, every system check — cached intelligently with appropriate TTLs.
18 Atomic Components
Heres where it got fun. I built 18 different components that users can mix and match across 1-9 configurable lines:
Block metrics showing conversation usage. Burn rate monitoring so you know how fast youre spending tokens. Cache efficiency stats. Cost projections for session, daily, weekly, monthly. Git branch with commit counts and submodule tracking. MCP server health with connection status. Prayer times with Hijri calendar. Block reset countdown timers.
Each component is independent. Dont care about prayer times? Remove it. Want cost tracking front and center? Move it to line one. The TOML configuration has 227 settings, all pre-filled with sensible defaults.
The Prayer Times Feature
People ask about this one. Why does a developer tool have Islamic prayer times built in?
Because I need them. Im Muslim. I pray five times a day. And when Im deep in a coding session, I lose track of time. Having Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, Isha times right there in my terminal means I never miss a prayer because I was too focused on debugging.
It auto-detects your location using CoreLocationCLI on macOS or geoclue2 on Linux. Calculates prayer times using proper astronomical formulas. Shows the Hijri date. Its not a gimmick — its genuinely useful for Muslim developers worldwide.
And you know what? Nobody has complained. In fact, several Muslim developers reached out saying this feature alone made the tool worth installing. Alhamdulillah.
Three Themes, Infinite Customization
I shipped three built-in themes:
- Catppuccin Mocha — the trendy one, because developers love Catppuccin
- Garden — earthy greens and browns, my personal favorite
- Classic — high contrast for accessibility
But the real power is custom themes. Every color is configurable. Want hot pink headers? Go for it. Corporate blue because your company requires it? Sure. The theme system uses semantic color names mapped to hex values, so changing the entire look is just editing a few lines in your config.
The 3-Tier Download System
Installation was a nightmare to get right. GitHub rate limits. Corporate firewalls. Flaky connections. Users were failing to install, and nothing kills adoption faster than a broken setup experience.
So I built a 3-tier download system:
- Direct GitHub raw URLs — 99% success rate for most users
- GitHub API fallback — for when raw URLs are blocked
- Exponential retry with jitter — because networks are unreliable
The installer handles everything. Detects your shell (bash, zsh, fish). Creates XDG-compliant directories. Sets up the hook in your Claude Code config. Five minutes from discovery to working statusline.
Why Bash?
TypeScript developer builds a bash tool. Sounds backwards, right?
But think about it. Claude Code runs in a terminal. Every developer already has bash. No Node runtime required. No Python dependencies. No cargo build. Just bash 3.2+ and jq for JSON parsing. Thats it.
The portability is insane. macOS 12+. Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, Alpine. Even WSL on Windows. One codebase, runs everywhere. Try doing that with a compiled language.
The Moment It Clicked
I posted about it on Twitter. Shared the repo. Went to bed expecting maybe 5-10 stars from friends being polite.
Woke up to 50 stars. Then 100. Then people filing issues, suggesting features, actually using the thing. The Claude Code community grabbed onto it and ran.
215 stars as of writing this. For a bash script. A terminal statusline. Something I built because I was annoyed at 2am.
Turns out other developers were equally frustrated with the default experience. They just needed someone to build the solution first.
What I Learned
Scratch your own itch. The best tools come from genuine frustration. I didnt do market research. I didnt validate demand. I just built what I wanted and it resonated.
Bash is underrated. Everyone wants to write tools in Rust or Go. But bash is everywhere, its fast enough, and the deployment story is unbeatable. Sometimes boring technology wins.
Documentation matters. Half the stars probably came from the README. Screenshots, clear installation steps, configuration examples. If people cant figure out how to use your tool in 5 minutes, they bounce.
Ship early, iterate fast. The first version was embarrassing. But it existed. Real users found real bugs. Real feedback drove real improvements. Version 2 is infinitely better because version 1 shipped.
Whats Next
The roadmap keeps growing. Better Windows support. More themes. Integration with other AI coding tools beyond Claude. Maybe a web configurator so people dont have to edit TOML manually.
But honestly? Its already useful. 215 developers are using it daily. Thats more impact than most side projects ever achieve.
And every time I see that statusline update with my burn rate, my git branch, my prayer times — I remember why I built it. Tools should work for you. They should give you information when you need it. They should respect your workflow, your values, your time.
Thats what Claude Code Statusline does. And apparently, 215 other developers agree.
Tech Stack: Bash, jq, TOML configuration, XDG-compliant caching
Status: Live and actively maintained
Links: GitHub • Homebrew Tap
Stats: 215+ stars • 18 components • 3 themes • 227 config options