Context Bar
Context Bar is a beta extension for VS Code that shows Claude Code context window usage directly in the status bar.
It gives you a quick visual readout of how much context has been used, plus token totals, without leaving your editor.
Features
- Shows Claude Code context usage in the status bar
- Displays a compact bar, percentage, and used tokens
- Updates automatically from the latest transcript in
~/.claude/projects
- Adds a tooltip with input, output, and total window size
- Includes a
Context Bar: Configure Claude Code command
How It Works
The extension watches the latest Claude Code transcript in ~/.claude/projects and reads usage data from the newest assistant message that contains token usage information.
When usage data is available, the status bar updates automatically.
Setup
- Install the extension.
- Start or resume a Claude Code session so transcript files exist under
~/.claude/projects.
- Optional: run
Context Bar: Configure Claude Code from the Command Palette to write the bundled helper command into ~/.claude/settings.json.
- Keep coding. The status bar updates as new usage data appears.
Status Bar Display
- Green for lower usage
- Yellow as usage grows
- Red when the context window is getting tight
Hover the status bar item to see detailed token counts.
Workflows Tab
Run Context Bar: Show Workflows from the Command Palette — or click the ⟳ N workflows status bar item while runs are active — to open a tab showing the runs of Claude Code's Workflow tool in every live Claude Code session on this machine, with this workspace's sessions first.
- Select a run to see its phases and agents; select an agent to see its prompt, tasks, recent tool calls and outcome — what Claude Code's
/workflows shows.
- Switch an agent's card to Transcript to read everything it did — its prompt, replies, thinking and every tool call with its input and result — live while it runs. Open transcript opens the raw file.
- Finished runs also show their
log() lines and result or error. Failed, stopped and interrupted runs offer Copy resume call: a Workflow({...}) call to paste into Claude Code.
- The tab only reads Claude Code's files under
~/.claude (or CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR); it never changes them and uses no Claude usage. It checks for changes about once a second while visible, every 3 seconds otherwise.
- Turn it off with the setting
contextBar.workflows.enabled.
Limitations:
- While a run is live, agents waiting for a slot, results a resumed run reuses from cache, and the difference between failed, skipped and blocked agents appear only when the run finishes; live counts are lower bounds (shown with
+).
- Only this machine's sessions are shown — not WSL, remote or cloud sessions.
- After a VS Code restart, runs from before a session's
/clear are shown only once they finish.
- The process start-time liveness check is Windows-only; elsewhere a crashed session whose pid was recycled can stay listed until Claude Code cleans its registry.
- Stop, pause, skip, retry and save-script are not available here; use
/workflows in Claude Code.
- The transcript view shows an agent's latest attempt; a very long transcript shows its newest ~1 MB (Open transcript has the rest); replies and thinking are shown as plain text.
- The formats are internal to Claude Code and were verified with Claude Code 2.1.284.
Beta Notes
This is a beta release. The formatting, setup flow, and Claude Code integration may change as the extension evolves.
