Claude Meter

A floating pixel meter that shows how much Claude I have left, live.

Type: Side project
Role: Design and build, with Claude Code
Timeline: 1 week, Oct 2026
Built with: Swift, HTML, CSS, Claude Code
Link: github.com/bonyuiux/Claude-Meter

An unofficial fan project, not made by Anthropic. Mac only. Free and open source.

The Problem

I use Claude all day, in chat and in Claude Code, and both share the same usage limit. The only way to know how much I had left was to open the usage page, so I kept doing it, sometimes twenty times a day. Every check broke my flow. I wanted the answer to just be there, on my desktop, without asking for it.

Challenges

My first version estimated usage from Claude Code's logs, but it couldn't see my chats, so the number drifted. A number that's wrong is worse than no number at all. I rebuilt it to read my real usage live from my account, and to turn pink and say “Not live” the moment it can't.

The second challenge was restraint. It had to stay glanceable, so every extra sentence I added, I later removed.

Feature 01

Live usage, across chat and Claude Code

The meter shows the same numbers as Claude's usage page, refreshed every minute, for everything I use. A small “● Live · updated 20s ago” tells me it's real.

Live numbers, with the time of the last update.

Feature 02

A race against the reset

Clawd, the little Claude Code character, runs toward the reset flag as time passes, and a fire of burned tokens chases him. If the fire catches him, I'm using Claude faster than time and will run out early. I can read it in a glance.

Safe, sweating, caught, out: the whole story in one loop.

The meter in the "Sweating" state — Sweating

The meter in the "Caught" state — Caught

Feature 03

Thinking, then done

A speech bubble pops out of the meter while Claude is thinking, in chat or in code, and Clawd celebrates when a task is done. When two run at once it shows “×2”, so I can look away and come back at the right moment.

The bubble shows ×2 while two tasks run, then Clawd celebrates.

Feature 04

Stays out of the way

It shrinks to a slim mini strip that sits in a corner, grows away from the screen edge when expanded, and has a sync button for when I want the number right now.