paceline
Claude Code tells you how much of your weekly limit is left, but not whether that is a lot or a little for the days remaining. paceline divides what is left by the days until the reset, gives you today’s budget, and counts it down as you work.
One line, every session
The status line sits under the prompt and updates as you work. Here is how it reads from a fresh day to a limit running out.
Status line: Opus 5.5 · acme-portal (dev) · s 98% · w 80% · t 100% of 28% · 2m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · acme-portal (dev) · s 96% · w 80% · t 99% of 28% · 6m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · field-app (feat/offline) · s 80% · w 74% · t 79% of 28% · 40m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · field-app (feat/offline) · s 55% · w 66% · t 50% of 28% · 1h50m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · field-app (feat/offline) · s 38% · w 59% · t 25% of 28% · 3h0m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · field-app (feat/offline) · s 32% · w 55% · t 11% of 28% · 4h10m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · billing-api (fix/webhooks) · s 48% · w 51% · t over 4% of 28% · 2h10m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · billing-api (fix/webhooks) · s 43% · w 49% · t over 13% of 28% · 2h25m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · billing-api (fix/webhooks) · s 39% · w 47% · t over 18% of 28% · 2h40m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · high effort · acme-portal (dev) · s 34% · w 62% · t 34% of 28% · 2h45m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · high effort · acme-portal (dev) · s 26% (resets 3:40pm) · w 60% · t 27% of 28% · ctx 72% · 3h25m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · high effort · acme-portal (dev) · s 12% (resets 3:40pm) · w 58% · t 20% of 28% · ctx 86% · 4h5m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · docs-site (main) · s 63% · w 70% · t 63% of 28% · 47m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · docs-site (main) · s 63% · w 70% · t 63% of 28% · cache cold: 82k @ ~2x · 59m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · acme-portal (dev) · s 70% · w 66% · t 48% of 28% · loop ▰▰▰▱▱ #328 2/5 · 1h30m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · acme-portal (dev) · s 65% · w 65% · t 45% of 28% · loop ▰▰▰▰▱ #329 3/5 · 1h50m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · acme-portal (dev) · s 61% · w 64% · t 41% of 28% · loop ▰▰▰▰▰ #330 4/5 · 2h10m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · acme-portal (dev) · s 57% · w 63% · t 38% of 28% · loop ▰▰▰▰▰ ✓ done · 2h30m
Window 1 status line: Opus 5.5 · acme-portal (dev) · s 42% · w 61% · t 32% of 28% · 1h10m
Window 2 status line: Opus 5.5 · high effort · field-app (feat/offline) · s 42% · w 61% · t 32% of 28% · ctx 74% · 25m
Window 3 status line: Opus 5.5 · fast mode · billing-api (fix/webhooks) · s 42% · w 61% · t 32% of 28% · 10m
Window 4 status line: Opus 5.5 · paceline (dev) · s 42% · w 61% · t 32% of 28% · loop ▰▰▱ #42 1/3 · 5m
Window 1 status line: Opus 5.5 · acme-portal (dev) · s 39% · w 60% · t 29% of 28% · 1h30m
Window 2 status line: Opus 5.5 · high effort · field-app (feat/offline) · s 39% · w 60% · t 29% of 28% · ctx 74% · 45m
Window 3 status line: Opus 5.5 · fast mode · billing-api (fix/webhooks) · s 39% · w 60% · t 29% of 28% · 30m
Window 4 status line: Opus 5.5 · paceline (dev) · s 39% · w 60% · t 29% of 28% · loop ▰▰▰ #43 2/3 · 25m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · field-app (main) · s 97% · w 67% · t 99% of 68% · 5m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · field-app (main) · s 69% · w 55% · t 81% of 68% · 1h35m
Status line: Opus 5.5 · field-app (main) · s 43% · w 42% · t 62% of 68% · 3h5m
What each part means
Every number is how much is left, counting down, so lower always means closer to a limit. The color of the today segment is the pace advice: green while you have room, yellow once less than 30% of the budget is left, and red below 15%. Whatever you don’t spend spreads over the rest of the week, so a light Monday leaves bigger budgets later on. Prefer words? A verbose style spells the labels out.
- Model
Opus 5.5The model, without the context-size suffix.
- Effort
high effortOnly when effort is above low or medium.
- Fast mode
fast modeOnly while fast mode is on.
- Project
techcentral (dev)The folder in a color unique to that project, and its git branch. Easy to tell three sessions apart.
- Session
s 18% (resets 3:40pm)Five-hour limit left. The reset time appears once less than 30% is left. Verbose: "session 18% left".
- Week
w 96%Weekly limit left. Verbose: "week 96% left".
- Today
t 54% of 28%How much of the budget for today is left, then the budget: the share of the week set aside for today, fixed all day. Go over and it turns red and shows how far over you are instead: "t over 18% of 28%". Verbose: "today 54% left of 28% budget".
- Context
ctx 72%Only when the context window is 70% or more full.
- Cache
cache cold: 82k @ ~2xOnly when the prompt cache has expired.
- Progress
loop ▰▰▰▰▱ #44 3/5Only while an agent reports progress on a long job: one cell per step, with the current step and count.
- Duration
16mHow long the session has run. Always last, at the right edge.
Built to do very little
A status line runs on every refresh, in every repo you open. So paceline is a single binary that reads what Claude Code hands it and prints one line.
- No dependencies. It uses only the Go standard library.
- It never starts processes or touches the network, and the build fails if that changes. The optional paceline-mcp helper follows the same rules and only writes a progress file.
- It strips control characters from folder and branch names, so a hostile repo name cannot hijack your terminal.
- The installer backs up your settings and never overwrites a file it cannot parse.
Install it
Download the binary for macOS, Linux, or Windows from the latest release (opens in a new tab), or build it with Go. Then point Claude Code at it:
go install github.com/rogadev/paceline/cmd/paceline@latest
paceline installpaceline uninstall puts back whatever status line you had before.
Run long jobs with orc-pack? Register the paceline-mcp server that ships in the same release, and every /orc run or /orc-loop batch shows up as a progress bar in your status line, with no extra setup.
Want tooling like this for your team?