Local-first AI coding agent observability in your editor: Claude Code token usage, Codex cost and Cursor spend across 50 adapters, provider-exact via a local proxy. No account needed.
Installation
Launch VS Code Quick Open (Ctrl+P), paste the following command, and press enter.
Track what every AI coding agent costs, inside your editor. See the limit coming.
See what Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and 37 more AI coding tools cost, per session and per model,
from the tokens your provider actually billed. No account, and your session content stays local.
Why SuperBased
Provider-exact cost. A local proxy records the tokens your provider returned, including
5-minute vs 1-hour cache writes, reasoning tokens and long-context repricing.
Every coding agent in one place. 50 adapters: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot,
Gemini CLI, Cline, Aider, Kiro, Devin, OpenCode, Junie and more, in one local database.
Local-first. Everything is stored in ~/.observer/observer.db on your workspace host.
Know the next bill before it lands. Prompt-cache expiry warnings and a cost band for your next
message.
Get started
Install the extension. Each platform build bundles the observer binary, so there is nothing
else to install.
Nothing to start. In the default auto mode the extension attaches to a running daemon or
starts one, and only ever stops a daemon it started.
Open the dashboard: run SuperBased: Open Dashboard, or click the spend item in the status
bar.
Capture a session with exact tokens: open a terminal with the AI Coding Tool
(SuperBased-proxied) profile (terminal panel, the arrow next to +), then run claude,
codex or another agent CLI. Or use SuperBased: Launch Claude Code (proxied) / Launch Codex
(proxied).
If something looks off, run SuperBased: Doctor. The Get Started with SuperBased walkthrough
(Help > Welcome) covers the rest.
macOS needs version 13 Ventura or later. The bundled observer binary is built with Go 1.27,
which no longer runs on macOS 12 Monterey. On macOS 12, stay on v1.36.0 or upgrade macOS first.
v1.36.0 was meant to carry an advance notice of this and did not. Linux and Windows are not
affected.
What you get
Surface
What it does
Status bar
Today's spend at a glance, plus a prompt-cache status item. Click to open the dashboard.
Sidebar
Today, Sessions, Discovery and Costs (7d) trees in the SuperBased activity bar view.
Dashboard tab
The full local dashboard (sessions, cost, cache, security, live activity) in an editor tab.
File decorations
A marker on files your agents touched recently, with who read or edited them.
Terminal profile
Pre-sets the proxy environment so agent CLIs started from it route through SuperBased.
Instruction CodeLens
Refresh or preview suggestions for your agent instruction files from captured patterns.
Sessions: every session from every agent, with cost and tags.
Cache: which prompt caches are warm and when they go cold.
Inside a session
Click any session to open its detail view. Four of its tabs:
Overview: cost, tokens by billing tier and the models used.
Messages: each message with its model, tool calls and cost.
Cost & limits: what the next message will cost and how much of your limit is left.
Cache: the session's live cache, hits, writes and rewrites.
Settings
Setting
Default
Purpose
observer.daemon.mode
auto
auto attaches or starts a daemon; detect only attaches.
observer.binary.path
empty
Use a specific observer binary instead of the bundled one.
observer.binary.preferPathBinary
false
Prefer an observer already on your PATH.
observer.dashboard.port
8081
Dashboard port.
observer.proxy.port
8820
Proxy port.
observer.statusBar.enabled
true
Show today's spend in the status bar.
observer.cacheStatusBar.enabled
true
Show the prompt-cache status item.
Privacy
No account needed. After the binary is in place, the extension talks only to
127.0.0.1 on your workspace host; it contacts GitHub Releases only if it finds neither a bundled
nor a local binary. Remote-SSH, WSL, Dev Containers and Codespaces keep the data on the remote host.
