ccstatusline explained: the widgets, the install, and what it leaves out

ccstatusline is a free, MIT-licensed tool by Matthew Breedlove that turns Claude Code's status line into a row of widgets you choose from a menu: model, git branch, context, session cost, and your five-hour and weekly usage with reset countdowns. If you have seen colorful Powerline bars under someone's Claude Code prompt in a screenshot, this is one of the tools that draws them. What it cannot do is remember last week or warn you when no terminal is open, and that is the job of UsageAtlas.

Where ccstatusline sits

Claude Code's status line is a hook rather than a feature with fixed contents. Claude Code hands a command some JSON about the session, then prints whatever the command returns at the bottom of the screen. ccstatusline is that command, plus a terminal interface for configuring it. Anthropic's status line page names it, along with starship-claude, as a community project with ready-made configurations and themes.

As of November 2026 the npm package is at version 2.2.33, and the GitHub repository saw changes as recently as November 2.

Install it

1. Run npx -y ccstatusline@latest, or bunx -y ccstatusline@latest if you use Bun. Nothing needs installing first beyond Node.js or Bun.
2. In the menu, add widgets, reorder them, color them and watch a live preview. You can build more than one line.
3. Pick an install option. The default, a pinned global install, puts ccstatusline on your machine and writes "command": "ccstatusline" into Claude Code's settings.
4. Open Claude Code. It reloads settings by itself and runs a new status line command right away.

Why pin? The README points out that the status line command runs on every repaint. In the maintainer's own Windows timing, an npx call took over a second each time, and a pinned install skips the package lookup altogether.

The widgets worth knowing

Settings live in ~/.config/ccstatusline/settings.json, and the menu can export them as JSON so a teammate can import your layout.

Small print

• Windows. The project keeps a separate Windows page covering PowerShell, fonts, WSL and Windows Terminal.
• Blank in one folder. Claude Code only runs status line commands in workspaces you have trusted, so accept the trust prompt.
• Plan numbers. Claude Code passes the five-hour and weekly percentages to status line commands for claude.ai Pro, Max and Ultra subscribers. On API billing you get cost and context instead.

What it leaves out

ccstatusline shows the session in front of you. When the terminal closes, so does the view. It has no daily history, no chart of which model ate your week, nothing on Codex or Cursor, and no ping while you are in a meeting and the weekly window is nearly gone.

UsageAtlas covers that half. It is a free, open-source desktop tracker for Windows, macOS and Linux that sits in the tray, keeps your Claude Code windows and reset times, logs tokens and estimated cost by day and model, and sends one alert per reset cycle at the threshold you choose. It also tracks Codex, Cursor, OpenCode and ten more coding tools, and it does not read prompts or responses. The UsageAtlas write-up on running a status line next to a usage dashboard shows how the two split the work.

If you live in one Claude Code window and only care about the current session, ccstatusline on its own is plenty. Add UsageAtlas the first time a limit surprises you.