Claude Code custom status line

claude-code-status-line.md

Claude Code Custom Status Line

A custom status line that shows session info: model, reasoning effort, context usage, and cost.

Opus 4.7 (1M context) | max | 4% | $0.02

• Model (blue) - shortened model name
• Effort (neon rainbow) - reasoning effort level, cyan → green → yellow → orange → pink as effort increases. Hidden on models that don't support it
• Context (yellow) - percentage of context window used
• Cost (green) - session cost in USD

Prerequisites

• jq installed (brew install jq on macOS)
• A terminal that supports 24-bit truecolor (most modern terminals do: iTerm2, Alacritty, Kitty, WezTerm, Ghostty, recent macOS Terminal)

Setup

1. Create the script

Create ~/.claude/statusline-command.sh:

#!/bin/bash
input=$(cat)

model=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.model.display_name | sub("^anthropic\\.claude-";"") | sub("-v[0-9]+$";"")')
effort=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.effort.level // empty')
ctx=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.context_window.used_percentage // 0')
cost=$(echo "$input" | jq -r '.cost.total_cost_usd')

cost_fmt=$(printf "%.2f" "$cost")

case "$effort" in
  low)    effort_color=$'\033[38;2;0;255;255m' ;;    # neon cyan
  medium) effort_color=$'\033[38;2;57;255;20m' ;;    # neon green
  high)   effort_color=$'\033[38;2;255;255;51m' ;;   # neon yellow
  xhigh)  effort_color=$'\033[38;2;255;102;0m' ;;    # neon orange
  max)    effort_color=$'\033[38;2;255;16;240m' ;;   # neon pink
  *)      effort_color=$'\033[35m' ;;                # fallback magenta
esac

printf "\033[34m%s\033[0m" "$model"
if [ -n "$effort" ]; then
  printf " \033[2m|\033[0m %s%s\033[0m" "$effort_color" "$effort"
fi
printf " \033[2m|\033[0m \033[33m%s%%\033[0m \033[2m|\033[0m \033[32m\$%s\033[0m" "$ctx" "$cost_fmt"

Make it executable:

chmod +x ~/.claude/statusline-command.sh

2. Configure Claude Code

Add the statusLine entry to ~/.claude/settings.json:

{
  "statusLine": {
    "type": "command",
    "command": "bash ~/.claude/statusline-command.sh"
  }
}

That's it. The status line appears at the bottom of the Claude Code terminal.

How it works

Claude Code pipes a JSON object to the status line command's stdin on each refresh. The script extracts four fields:

Field	JSON path	Description
Model	.model.display_name	Active model, trimmed to short name (e.g. opus-4-7)
Effort	.effort.level	Reasoning effort (low, medium, high, xhigh, max). Absent on unsupported models
Context	.context_window.used_percentage	Percentage of context window consumed
Cost	.cost.total_cost_usd	Cumulative session cost in USD

The effort segment is rendered conditionally, so models that don't expose .effort produce a status line without that pipe.

Effort colors

Each level gets its own neon truecolor shade, progressing cool to hot so the status line visually signals how hard the model is thinking:

Level	Color	Hex
low	Neon cyan	#00FFFF
medium	Neon green	#39FF14
high	Neon yellow	#FFFF33
xhigh	Neon orange	#FF6600
max	Neon pink	#FF10F0

Customisation

Colors

The ANSI escape codes in the printf control colors. The model, context, and cost segments use the 16-color palette:

Code	Color
\033[31m	Red
\033[32m	Green
\033[33m	Yellow
\033[34m	Blue
\033[35m	Magenta
\033[36m	Cyan
\033[1m	Bold
\033[2m	Dim

The effort segment uses 24-bit truecolor: \033[38;2;R;G;Bm. Swap in any RGB triple to re-theme a level.

Available fields

The full JSON input includes:

{
  "session_id": "...",
  "cwd": "/path/to/project",
  "model": { "id": "...", "display_name": "..." },
  "effort": { "level": "high" },
  "version": "2.1.39",
  "cost": {
    "total_cost_usd": 3.10,
    "total_duration_ms": 80201764,
    "total_api_duration_ms": 545739,
    "total_lines_added": 106,
    "total_lines_removed": 38
  },
  "context_window": {
    "used_percentage": 19,
    "remaining_percentage": 81,
    "context_window_size": 200000
  }
}