Claude Context Bar
Real-time context window monitor for Claude Code sessions in VS Code
Features
🧠 Live Context Tracking — See your Claude Code context usage percentage right in the status bar
⚡ Per-Tab Monitoring — Each Claude Code tab gets its own context indicator
🎯 Fuzzy Emoji Matching — Icons automatically match your project type based on name keywords:
- 🎵 Music/audio projects
- 🎮 Games
- 🌐 Web/frontend
- 📱 Mobile apps
- 🤖 AI/ML projects
- 🔧 Tools/extensions
- And many more...
🎨 Auto Color Mode — Each project automatically gets a unique pastel color for easy identification
🔍 Smart Context Detection — Automatically detects your model (Sonnet 4.5 1M vs others) and adjusts the context limit accordingly
⚠️ Color-Coded Warnings:
- Normal: Under 50% usage
- Warning (yellow background): 50-75% usage
- Danger (red background): Over 75% usage
📊 Detailed Tooltips — Hover to see:
- First message (matches Claude Code tab name)
- Model name
- Cache Read / Cache Creation tokens
- Total context used vs limit
- Last updated time
🔄 Auto-Refresh — Updates automatically when sessions change or every 30 seconds
🧹 Smart Session Detection — Automatically hides "ghost" sessions when you close tabs or run /clear
👆 Click to Hide — Click any context bar item to temporarily hide it; reappears on new activity
📐 Compact Mode — Shorten project names to save space (my-cool-project → MCP, typescript → Tscript)
Requirements
- VS Code 1.74.0 or later
- Claude Code extension installed and active
Install:
Configuration
| Setting |
Default |
Description |
claudeContextBar.showEmoji |
true |
Show emoji icons based on project name keywords |
claudeContextBar.autoColor |
true |
Automatically assign unique pastel colors to each project |
claudeContextBar.baseColor |
White |
Base color when Auto Color is off (subtle variations per project) |
claudeContextBar.contextLimit |
200000 |
Fallback context limit (auto-detected for most models) |
claudeContextBar.warningThreshold |
50 |
Percentage for yellow warning |
claudeContextBar.dangerThreshold |
75 |
Percentage for red danger |
claudeContextBar.refreshInterval |
30 |
Refresh interval in seconds |
claudeContextBar.idleTimeout |
180 |
Seconds of inactivity before hiding a session (3 minutes) |
claudeContextBar.compactMode |
false |
Shorten project names to save status bar space |
claudeContextBar.shortNames |
{} |
Custom short names for projects (e.g., {"my-project": "MP"}) |
How It Works
The extension reads Claude Code's session files from ~/.claude/projects/ and calculates token usage from the JSONL logs. It automatically detects which model you're using and adjusts the context limit:
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 1M: 1,000,000 tokens
- All other models (Sonnet 4.5, Opus 4.5, Haiku): 200,000 tokens
Sessions inactive for more than 3 minutes (configurable via idleTimeout) are automatically hidden. The extension also detects when sessions have been superseded by newer ones (e.g., after running /clear and opening a new tab), hiding ghost sessions immediately.
License
MIT © 2025 Ed Zisk
