Why

Claude Code shows you what it's doing. pitwall shows you what it's costing, and lets you act on it.

• Cost by source. The session's spend split into the main conversation, the advisor, subagents and background work.
• Cache countdown. How long until the prompt cache goes cold, and what your next message costs either way.
• Rate limits with pace. Whether you're ahead of or behind an even pace, and when each window resets.
• Agents you can stop. A card per subagent with its cost and tokens, and a stop button.
• One-click model and effort. Switch from the box, no slash command.
• Fourteen themes. They repaint Claude Code itself, the chat history and your terminal's colours.
• Nothing leaves your machine. No network calls. It reads only what Claude Code already writes.

Not a status line: a status line is a script run on every refresh. pitwall is a plugin that draws into Claude Code and reacts to its events, so every figure is live.

Install

/plugin install pitwall --marketplace axlaser/pitwall

Needs Claude Code 2.1.299 or later. Restart once to get the themes in /theme.

Shell, desktop app, update, uninstall

Shell	claude plugin install pitwall --marketplace axlaser/pitwall
Desktop app	+ by the prompt, Plugins, Add marketplace axlaser/pitwall, Add plugin
Update	claude plugin update pitwall, then /reload-plugins
Uninstall	/plugin uninstall pitwall

The box

Row	Shows
repo	Path, branch, ahead/behind, insertions/deletions, stashes, and SIDEBAR ›
model	Context bar, tokens used, model ▾, effort ▾, and Claude's working animation
tokens	Session totals in, out and cached, with this turn's share

Click the model or the effort to open its picker, pick, and ✓ Confirm.

More about the box

• The context bar turns yellow at 60% and red at 85%. Past 85%, a compact context button appears.
• The box narrows with the terminal, dropping its least important figures first.
• Windows: paste a screenshot with Alt+V and #N open ↗ opens it full size.
• ctrl+x ctrl+a hides and shows the box.

The side panel

Docks beside the transcript in fullscreen mode. Open it with /sidebar or SIDEBAR ›.

It holds a card each for usage, the session, the cache, the advisor and every subagent. Click a section's name to fold it to one line.

Keys and sizing

• Drag its edge, or ctrl+x ← / ctrl+x →, to resize it; ctrl+x x closes it.
• Needs fullscreen mode ("tui": "fullscreen") and 110 columns or more.
• At any width each card keeps its rows on one line.

Usage

Your 5-hour and 7-day rate limits: how much is used, and when each window resets. The tick marks an even pace through the window, so a bar past its tick is spending faster than the limit lasts.

Session

Messages, time to first output and to the full reply, transcript size, and auto mode's allowed and blocked calls. Then the session's cost, split between the main conversation, the advisor, subagents and background work, moving as each request lands.

Cache

Whether the prompt cache is warm and how long until it goes cold. next is what your next message pays to read it; if cold, what it would pay to write it again. Every request resets the countdown.

Advisor

Appears once Claude consults the advisor: its model, calls, tokens, cost and share of the session. A subagent's advisor calls count here too.

Agents

Every subagent gets a card: its task, model, effort, tokens, cost and cache countdown, live while it works.

• ■ Stop, then ■ Confirm, stops a running agent.
• ✕ dismiss clears a finished one. They also leave on their own after a minute, and slide back in if Claude resumes them.

Click an agent's name to open its transcript in the main view. ‹ main conversation at the top of the panel goes back, and so does clicking its name again.

Themes

Pick one in /theme. Each comes in dark and light: Tokyo Night, Dracula, Catppuccin, Gruvbox, Nord, Noir and Mono.

A theme paints Claude Code's own text and diffs, the box and panel, the chat history (tool calls as coloured rows, tables as cards), and the terminal's background and text colour. Any other theme keeps pitwall's classic look.

Terminal colours on Windows, or terminals without OSC 10 and 11

pitwall sets the background and text colour itself on macOS and Linux (VS Code, iTerm2, Ghostty, kitty, WezTerm). Elsewhere, set them by hand. In VS Code's settings.json:

"workbench.colorCustomizations": { "terminal.background": "#1a1b26", "terminal.foreground": "#c0caf5" }

Theme	Background	Text
Tokyo Night	#1a1b26	#c0caf5
Tokyo Day	#e1e2e7	#3760bf
Dracula	#282a36	#f8f8f2
Alucard	#fffbeb	#1f1f1f
Catppuccin Mocha	#1e1e2e	#cdd6f4
Catppuccin Latte	#eff1f5	#4c4f69
Gruvbox Dark	#282828	#ebdbb2
Gruvbox Light	#fbf1c7	#3c3836
Nord	#2e3440	#d8dee9
Nord Light	#eceff4	#2e3440
Noir	#0a0a0a	#e8e8e8
Noir Light	#ffffff	#1a1a1a
Mono	#1c1c1c	#d0d0d0
Mono Light	#f2f2f2	#2a2a2a

If Claude Code crashes, printf '\e]110\a\e]111\a' restores your own colours.

Settings

In /config, under pitwall:

Setting	Default
Alert sounds	on
Context alert (%)	70, 0 turns it off
Rate limit alert (%)	80, 0 turns it off
Theme the chat history	on
Paint the terminal background	on

Sounds play when Claude needs permission, finishes, compacts, or crosses an alert threshold.

Troubleshooting

Nothing shows

Check /plugin lists pitwall as enabled and claude --version is 2.1.299 or later. Failures show as a dim pitwall: … line in the transcript; claude --debug logs the reason.

The box disappeared

ctrl+x ctrl+a hides it. Press it again.

No side panel

It needs fullscreen mode and 110 columns. /sidebar says why when it can't open.

Theme colours look washed out

Set VS Code's terminal.integrated.minimumContrastRatio to 1.

The screen is garbled

Resize the terminal, or bind app:redraw in ~/.claude/keybindings.json:

{ "bindings": [{ "context": "Global", "bindings": { "ctrl+x r": "app:redraw" } }] }

No sounds

Check the setting and your volume. Linux needs paplay, ffplay or ogg123.

License

MIT.