claudelike-bar

What would you do for a Claudelike Bar?

Probably open six terminals, lose track of which one needs input, miss the notification, and mass-Ctrl+Tab through all of them like a feral raccoon.

This fixes that.

LIVE PREVIEW — See it in action →

Interactive demo with animated status dots, theme colors, and all five states

What It Is

A VS Code sidebar that shows you — at a glance — what every Claude Code terminal is doing. Colored tiles, animated status dots, zero guesswork.

Install

Pick whichever gallery your editor uses:

Visual Studio Marketplace — vanilla VS Code (ext install aes87.claudelike-bar or the Extensions sidebar).
Open VSX — VSCodium, Cursor, and most Dev Containers / Codespaces setups.

After install:

VS Code prompts: "Claudelike Bar needs hooks to track terminal status. Set up your projects now?" Click Set Up Projects to run the wizard, or Install Hooks Only for a minimal start.
Tiles start updating on your next Claude turn.

Prerequisites: VS Code ≥ 1.93, Claude Code CLI installed and working. No jq, no bash, no special tools.

In a Dev Container or Codespace? See the Dev Containers section for a self-healing postAttachCommand snippet.

Prefer the command line or want to see every step? See the full install guide for CLI and manual setup.

Core Features

Live status tiles for every open Claude Code session — colored borders, animated dots, click to switch
Smart sort — auto floats sessions needing attention to the top; drag any tile to flip into manual mode
Auto-start projects — each terminal has its own startup command and working directory; opens on VS Code launch
Context window % — every tile shows how full the session's context is
Two personality modes — chill (quiet) or passive-aggressive (guilt-trips you with messages like "Patiently judging you")
Audio alerts — optional chime when Claude finishes (turnDone) and optional second sound for mid-job prompts (midJobPrompt). Ships with a gentle default chime + a soda-can pop alternative; drop your own clips in ~/.claude/sounds/ to override
Setup wizard + walkthrough — 5-step guided onboarding; VS Code's native walkthrough API for first-run

More features — drag-drop, pinning, offline tiles, remote dev, keyboard nav, mark-as-done, custom colors, nicknames, debug tracing

Drag and drop reordering — grab any tile, drop it where you want; order persists
Mark as done — right-click → "Mark as done" parks a session: sinks to bottom, goes quiet, ignores background events
Pinned tiles — right-click → Pin tile to fix a terminal in a stable bottom zone regardless of sortMode. Useful for monitoring/infra tiles you want at known coordinates while urgent project tiles float to the top (v0.13.4)
Offline tiles for registered projects — every entry in your config that isn't currently running shows as a dim/dashed tile in its own zone at the bottom. Click to launch. Per-entry hidden: true opt-out, or showRegisteredProjects: false to disable globally (v0.13.4)
Launch registered projects on demand — palette command + sidebar rocket button + tile right-click. Pairs with the Register only option in Register Project for building a registry without spawning terminals (v0.13)
Remote development — runs on the workspace side in WSL2, SSH Remote, Dev Containers, and Codespaces, so hooks/config/status files all line up with where Claude Code actually lives (v0.13.3)
Custom colors — per-terminal theme colors. Right-click a tile → swatch row + custom color picker (any CSS color) (picker added v0.13.2)
Nicknames — custom display names for terminals
Keyboard nav — arrow keys / j/k, Enter to switch
Auto-start safety — entries with missing cwd are skipped with a single summary toast instead of N modal errors (v0.13.1)
"Switch to auto sort" — when in manual mode, right-click any tile to flip back to status-based sort (v0.13.1)
Path-based identity — projects keyed by absolute path, collision-resistant slugs, no more basename conflicts (v0.10)
Global config — single ~/.claude/claudelike-bar.jsonc across all workspaces, auto-migrated from workspace-local (v0.10)
Sidebar Add Project button — one-click project registration from the empty state (v0.11)
Debug log — toggle on to trace every hook event and state transition
Cross-platform — Windows, macOS, Linux; PowerShell, bash, zsh, fish

How It Works

Statuses

Status	Trigger	Visual
Working	Claude is running tools	Green pulsing dot
Ready	Claude finished, needs input	Amber blinking dot
Waiting	Ready for 60+ seconds	Amber, floats to top
Ignored	You looked at it and switched away	Red dot + snarky message
Done	Quietly finished	Cyan static dot
Idle	No activity	Dim, no dot

The "ignored" state only activates in passive-aggressive mode. Messages include gems like "Patiently judging you" and "I'll just wait here then."

Commands

All commands are available from the command palette (Cmd+Shift+P / Ctrl+Shift+P), prefixed with Claudelike Bar:.

Command	What It Does
Set Up Projects	5-step setup wizard — pick folders, name projects, assign colors, choose command, review. Best for first-time setup.
Register Project	Add a project — folder picker, slug assignment, asks whether to open the terminal now or just register it for later. Also the "+" button in the sidebar header.
Open Config	Opens `~/.claude/claudelike-bar.jsonc` in the editor. Also available as the gear icon in the sidebar header.

All commands — install hooks, statusline, audio, launch, restore

Command	What It Does
Launch Registered Project	Open any registered project that isn't already running. QuickPick of your config entries; routes through the same launch path as auto-start. Also the rocket icon in the sidebar header and "Launch another project…" in the tile context menu.
Install Hooks	Copies the hook script to `~/.claude/hooks/` and registers event handlers in `~/.claude/settings.json`. Idempotent.
Install Statusline	Installs the optional context % statusline script. Prompts before replacing an existing statusline.
Restore Previous Statusline	Puts back the statusline that was replaced by Install Statusline, from the backup file.
Show Me the Hooks	Opens the hooks documentation in your browser — see exactly what gets written before installing.
Toggle Audio	Flips `audio.enabled` in the config. Also wired to the tile context menu as Mute Audio / Unmute Audio.
Open Sounds Folder	Opens `~/.claude/sounds/` in your OS file manager. Creates the folder and a README on first call if it's empty.

Configure

All settings live in ~/.claude/claudelike-bar.jsonc — a single global file next to your Claude Code hooks and settings. Cmd+Shift+P → Claudelike Bar: Open Config to open it. Auto-created when you first open a terminal or run the setup wizard. Edits take effect immediately — no reload.

{
  // "chill"              — terminals quietly fade to "Done"
  // "passive-aggressive" — guilt-trips you with snarky messages
  "mode": "chill",

  // "auto"   — sort tiles by status (waiting → ready → working → done → idle)
  // "manual" — respect drag-and-drop order from terminals[].order
  "sortMode": "auto",

  // Global command sent into auto-started terminals. Null to disable.
  // Per-terminal `command` below overrides this.
  "claudeCommand": null,

  "terminals": {
    "world-domination": {
      "path": "/home/you/projects/world-domination",
      "color": "cyan",
      "icon": "calendar",
      "autoStart": true,
      "command": "claude"
    },
    "yeet-to-prod": {
      "path": "/home/you/projects/yeet-to-prod",
      "color": "yellow",
      "icon": "server",
      "nickname": "deploy",
      "autoStart": true,
      "command": "claude"
    }
  }
}

Full field reference, sorting rules, cross-platform auto-start, and context % integration: terminal configuration guide.

[!TIP] Or just ask Claude. Open a Claude Code terminal and say "switch to passive-aggressive mode", "change the api terminal color to red", "auto-start world-domination when VS Code opens". Claude reads the JSONC, makes the change, and the extension picks it up immediately.

Audio

Optional sound when Claude is waiting on you. Off by default. Drop your own MP3/WAV/OGG files into ~/.claude/sounds/ and point the config at them. Two slots — one for end-of-turn, one (optional) for mid-job permission prompts — so you can tell "done" apart from "blocked on approval" by ear.

Quick setup:

Cmd+Shift+P → Claudelike Bar: Open Sounds Folder (creates the folder and drops a README in if it's empty).
Put one or two short clips in — Mixkit, Pixabay, and Freesound all have CC0 options.

Edit ~/.claude/claudelike-bar.jsonc:

"audio": {
  "enabled": true,
  "volume": 0.6,
  "sounds": { "ready": "chime.mp3", "permission": "ping.mp3" }
}

Or flip the switch without editing: Cmd+Shift+P → Claudelike Bar: Toggle Audio, or right-click any tile → Unmute Audio.

Focused tiles don't ding — you're already looking at them. Simultaneous finishes on multiple tiles coalesce into one sound. Full guide: audio setup.

Troubleshooting — activation errors, stuck tiles, missing hooks, statusline restore

Extension crashes on activation (Cannot find module './impl/format')

This happens when the esbuild bundle didn't properly inline jsonc-parser's internal modules. Rebuild:
```
npm run build && npm run package
code --install-extension claudelike-bar-*.vsix --force
```
Then reload VS Code. The build script uses --main-fields=module,main to resolve the ESM build of jsonc-parser, which bundles correctly.
To check activation status: grep -A2 "claudelike-bar" ~/.vscode-server/data/logs/*/exthost*/remoteexthost.log

Sidebar shows "No terminals open"

Reload VS Code after installing
Open at least one named terminal — plain shell terminals named "bash"/"zsh"/"sh" are filtered out. Use a VS Code terminal profile or rename the terminal
If the extension failed to activate (check the log above), no terminals will ever appear — fix the activation error first

Debugging with the trace log

Set "debug": true in ~/.claude/claudelike-bar.jsonc. The extension logs every hook event and state transition to the Claudelike Bar output channel (Ctrl+Shift+U), the hook script writes a trace to {os.tmpdir()}/claude-dashboard/debug.log, and the statusline script appends its own failures to the same file.

Put my old statusline back

Run Cmd+Shift+P → Claudelike Bar: Restore Previous Statusline. It reads ~/.claude/.claudelike-bar-statusline-backup.json, writes previous_statusLine back into ~/.claude/settings.json, and archives the backup to …-backup.json.restored.json.
If the command fails or the extension isn't installed, open ~/.claude/.claudelike-bar-statusline-backup.json and copy previous_statusLine back into ~/.claude/settings.json under "statusLine". The backup file includes a note field walking through this. You can also ask Claude Code in any terminal — "restore my old Claude statusline from the backup" — and it'll do it for you.

Tiles stuck on "Working" — never show "Ready for input"

The dashboard-status.js hook must be registered on all 4 events: PreToolUse, UserPromptSubmit, Stop, and Notification. If Stop/Notification are missing, the bar never sees the "finished" signal
Re-run ./setup.sh or node scripts/merge-hooks.js to add any missing events — both are idempotent
Verify: grep dashboard-status ~/.claude/settings.json should show the hook under all 4 events

Tiles appear but never update status

Check hooks are registered: grep dashboard-status ~/.claude/settings.json
Check the hook script exists and is executable: ls -la ~/.claude/hooks/dashboard-status.js
Check status files are being written: ls "$(node -e 'console.log(require(\"os\").tmpdir())')/claude-dashboard/"
If nothing there, the hooks aren't firing — verify Claude Code is running

Extension not showing in activity bar

Make sure you installed the .vsix, not just cloned the repo
Check Extensions panel for "Claudelike Bar" — it should be listed and enabled

Broke after container rebuild / VS Code update

The extension is reinstalled from the VSIX on container start, but the VS Code server (and its Node.js runtime) may have changed. If the extension was built with an older esbuild config, the bundle may not work with the new runtime
Rebuild from source: npm run build && npm run package && code --install-extension claudelike-bar-*.vsix --force
Check activation logs for the specific error

License

MIT — do whatever you want. We're not Klondike.

Claudelike Bar

aes87