optimAIzr for VS Code

Spend fewer tokens on the same work. The Claude Code cache countdown, your context size and your 5-hour window, right in the status bar. A heads-up before an expensive moment, and fixes you apply in one click. Everything stays on your machine.

$(layers) 142K · $(watch) 4:12 · 5h 38%

That is this folder's Claude Code conversation: 142K tokens of context, 4 minutes 12 seconds left on its cache, 38% of your 5-hour window used.

The optimAIzr sidebar: up to 13% to save, a cache expiring in 2:40, guard on

Why

In a long Claude Code session, most of what you pay for is not Claude writing code. It is Claude re-reading your conversation on every call, and writing it into the cache again when you come back after it expired.

Over my last 30 days on Claude Pro:

$676/mo of work at API prices, 34x what the plan costs
51 returns to an expired cache wrote 8.9M tokens again, about $56/mo
Up to 13% of it could be saved, about 1.1x the work per 5-hour window and per week

Your numbers show up the moment the extension opens.

What you get

A status bar that watches the cache. Context size, the cache countdown and the 5-hour window for the conversation in the folder you have open. It turns yellow in the last five minutes and red past 90% of the window. Hover for the details, click to open the sidebar.

A heads-up before the cache expires. About 5 minutes before a long conversation's cache runs out, when coming back after would cost at least $0.50. Reply now, or know what the break costs.

Guard, one switch. Guard holds the next message to an expired cache once and tells you what it would cost to send. Send it again and it goes through, or /clear and start from a short note of where you were. It also catches a big file read and a retry loop. The sidebar shows what it held this week.

One-click compaction. Compact Claude Code earlier, at 200K, so every message stops re-reading everything. Undo is one click too, and leaves the rest of your settings alone.

Fixes, biggest money first. Each fix says what happened, why it costs, and what to do. Habits get an I did this button, so optimAIzr can measure whether it worked.

Results. After a fix, see whether it worked: less per prompt, or too early to tell.

A done alert. A desktop notification when a turn of 45 seconds or more finishes while VS Code is in the background, so you can stop watching it work.

The full report. Where the share comes from, the biggest single win, and every fix opened up.

The full optimAIzr report

Private by design

optimAIzr reads the logs Claude Code already keeps in ~/.claude (and Codex and opencode, for the savings) and works everything out on your machine. No account, no upload, no telemetry. It reads token counts and the titles Claude Code gives conversations, never your prompts or Claude's answers. Guard, once you turn it on, keeps a short note from your last prompt for /clear, deleted once read or after 30 minutes.

Guard and the CLI

Everything in the sidebar works on its own. Turning guard on uses the free optimaizr command line tool, and the extension offers to install it for you (npm i -g optimaizr, Node.js 20 or newer). Turning guard off needs nothing.

Commands

Open the Command Palette and type optimAIzr.

Command	What it does
optimAIzr: Show savings	Opens the sidebar
optimAIzr: Open full report	Opens the report in an editor tab
optimAIzr: Refresh	Reads your history again
optimAIzr: Turn guard on / Turn guard off	Guard, the same switch as in the sidebar
optimAIzr: Compact Claude Code earlier, at 200K	Sets Claude Code's compaction window to 200K
optimAIzr: Undo earlier compaction	Puts compaction back where it was
optimAIzr: Settings	Opens these settings

Settings

Setting	Default	What it does
`optimaizr.statusBar.enabled`	on	Context, cache countdown and 5-hour window in the status bar
`optimaizr.alerts.cacheExpiring`	on	Heads-up about 5 minutes before a cache expires
`optimaizr.alerts.coldCache`	on	What a return to an expired cache cost
`optimaizr.alerts.longConversation`	on	Once, when a conversation grows past 200K
`optimaizr.alerts.guard`	on	When guard holds a message, a read or a retry
`optimaizr.alerts.claudeDone`	on	Desktop alert when a long turn finishes (macOS and Linux)
`optimaizr.days`	30	Days of history the savings are worked out over (7 to 90)
`optimaizr.cliPath`	empty	Where the `optimaizr` CLI is; empty looks on your PATH

Requirements

VS Code 1.90 or newer, or a fork that runs VS Code extensions
Claude Code, with some history in ~/.claude
For guard only: Node.js 20 or newer

optimAIzr: Claude Code savings

optimAIzr