glanceline

g-line

Live status. Receipts on the turns.

g-line is a Claude Code mod that puts context jumps, cache rebuilds and tool failures on the turns where they happen, not just in a status bar. Model and effort, the prompt cache and your usage windows stay under the prompt.

In Claude Code 2.1.293 or later, type at the prompt:

/plugin install g-line --marketplace lifeofgurpreet/g-line

What it does

• The unusual turn identifies itself. The line that closes each turn (Worked for 20s · done 11:01 AM) gets a receipt. An ordinary turn says what it cost at API prices and how much of its input the prompt cache served: API $0.22 · cache read 49%. An unusual one leads with up to two of these, in colour: +86k context, cache cold · rebuilt 42k, cache write 84k, 3 failed Bash calls or compacted 182k → 31k. A cost several times your recent turns says so: API $1.42 · 4x recent. Scroll back to see which turn changed things.
• The warning stays with the work. While a turn runs, the spinner shows its burn (3 tools · +4.1k ctx · 5h 74%). When calls keep failing, it names the tool and the file: ⚠ 3× Edit failures on core.ts. The receipt keeps that record after the turn ends.
• What matters stays visible. Your gauges ride at the end of Claude Code's own hint line (ctx 13% · 5h 1% · wk 79%!). One coloured line under it has the model and its effort, the cache countdown and what happens next: Opus 5.5 high · cache ~59m · wk out ~Thu 19:00, resets Fri 16:00. Nothing goes above the prompt.
• A heads-up before the cache goes cold. A native notification five minutes before a one-hour prompt cache expires, with what's at stake: Claude cache goes cold in 5m (148k of context at risk). Another tells you when a usage window resets after you came close to its limit.

Answer y to add the marketplace and pick a scope (user is the usual choice). The mod starts at once, with no restart. To remove it, run /plugin uninstall g-line.

Why a mod

A statusLine command is a separate program. Claude Code runs it and prints what it prints in a status area under the prompt. A mod runs inside Claude Code and can draw on Claude Code's own lines. That is what makes g-line possible:

• the receipt on each turn's own closing line, kept beside that turn in the terminal;
• the burn and failures on the working spinner, while the turn runs;
• the gauges at the end of the existing hint line, so the footer grows by one row, not two or three;
• each request's cache reads and writes, every tool call and its result, subagents, and compactions, read from the engine as they happen rather than from the transcript file;
• a /g-line command that runs without a Claude turn, a pane with buttons, and native notifications through your own notification channel.

How it compares

Read from each project's README on 2026-10-14. "Not documented" means not in its docs, not impossible.

Already happy with one of those? Set lines to receipts: g-line then adds only the receipts, spinner and heads-ups, and leaves your status line alone.

What you see

The receipt

These are observations, not diagnoses. g-line says a cold cache was rebuilt; it doesn't say whose fault that was. When a background agent ran alongside the turn, the session's cost growth isn't the turn's alone, so the dollar figure is left out. A narrow terminal drops the supporting facts first.

The two lines under the prompt

Line 1, at the end of Claude Code's hint line, drawn dim by Claude Code:

Line 2, g-line's own row, in colour:

When the terminal narrows, line 2 shortens first (Opus 5.5 to Opus, the effort kept), and what line 1 can't fit moves down rather than vanishing. A healthy window's reset time goes first; the warning keeps its projection the longest.

Prefer one line? Set lines to 1: everything rides on the hint line, and Claude Code's standing hint (shift+tab to cycle) shortens to ⇧⇥ to make room. Claude Code's own permission-mode label (⏵⏵ bypass permissions on) is drawn beside the hint where no mod can change it, so g-line leaves it as it is.

The spinner

Sautéing… · 3 tools · +4.1k ctx · 5h 74% while a turn runs, and ⚠ 3× Edit failures on core.ts first once calls keep failing.

Pulse (off unless you turn it on)

/g-line set pulse on (or p in /g-line settings) turns on Pulse, and a headline appears under the prompt within seconds, on a dim row of its own under line 2:

𝕏 @NeelNanda5 · 2h: This is interesting work, but I don't think it's a significant… · /g-line news

It moves to the next item every 8 seconds. The headline is a link: cmd-click (ctrl-click on Linux) opens it in terminals that draw OSC 8 links (iTerm2, Ghostty, WezTerm, kitty, VS Code; in tmux, add set -ga terminal-features "*:hyperlinks"). /g-line open opens whichever headline is showing; over SSH, where there's no browser to open, it copies the link instead. On a turn that runs longer than 15 seconds, the spinner shows the headlines too.

/g-line news is the reader. It lists every item in the feed, best first, as the feed ranks them. The picked one is shown in full: who and when, likes on 𝕏 or points on Hacker News, the story a post is about, the whole post, and its link. The rest are one headline each. j and k move, o or Enter opens, d opens a Hacker News item's comments, c copies the link, r refreshes, q closes. Items posted since you last opened it are marked new.

Headlines come from g-line's own static feed: posts on 𝕏 about AI, Claude Code releases, Anthropic's news pages, Hacker News stories about Claude, Simon Willison's AI posts, and a few items the maintainer picks. Each is labelled with where it came from. Posts on 𝕏 are the freshest part: under two hours old, or gaining likes fast enough to stay up to a day, or big enough to stay up to three days, and always about AI. No X API key is involved: the feed finds posts through the links Techmeme, AI subreddits and the Internet Archive carry, and rebuilds every 30 minutes.

When Pulse is on, g-line fetches one file, raw.githubusercontent.com/lifeofgurpreet/g-line/pulse/pulse.json, at most every 45 minutes. It sends nothing about you, it never fetches while drawing, and it gives up after five seconds. Headline text is stripped of escape and control characters before it reaches your terminal; the only escape g-line draws is its own link, to an https address it has checked. With Pulse off (the default), g-line makes no network requests at all.

The pane, settings and share card

/g-line opens a pane with every figure spelled out: limits with bars and reset times, warnings, agents, the last turns' receipts, what fills the context (counted locally, like /context), tools used and failed, and today's and this week's totals across sessions. Its top row flips the common settings with one key (l layout, r receipt, p Pulse), s opens all of them, and n opens the news reader. /g-line card shows a share card of the session with a copy button; it leaves out your repository, branch, paths and account. /g-line off hides everything g-line draws and keeps it quiet until /g-line on.

/g-line settings is the settings manager. Every setting is one row: its key, its value, and where the value comes from (default, config.json, /config, or your choice), with • marking the ones that differ from a fresh install. Press the key and the setting flips, at once, in this session and in every other open one, with no restart. z clears the choices you made here, so your files and the defaults decide again.

Show
l: Layout          two lines    default
p: Pulse           on         • config.json
x: Claude reads    on         • your choice

The same from the prompt: /g-line set pulse on, /g-line set receipt short, /g-line toggle git, /g-line reset pulse (back to what your files say), /g-line reset (all of them), and /g-line set all on. Names are forgiving: cold cache, cache and notify.cache are the same setting.

Configure

/g-line settings sets every on/off and layout choice without editing anything (see above). /config lists six: Layout (2, 1 or receipts), One-line preset, Icons, Heads-up toasts, Native notifications and Turn receipt. To set them for every session on a machine, or every machine you manage, write ~/.config/g-line/config.json (or put it under $XDG_CONFIG_HOME). Running sessions read it again within 15 seconds of an edit. Layers, lowest first: defaults, config.json, /config, then choices made with /g-line.

{
  "lines": 2,
  "git": true,
  "notify": { "cache": true, "reset": true, "long_turn": true },
  "today_budget": 50
}

~/.config/glanceline/config.json from 0.4 is still read, and g-line/config.json wins.

Let Claude read the figures (opt-in, experimental)

With claude_reads: true, g-line registers a tool, status, that returns a small JSON snapshot: context used and the room before auto-compact (when Claude Code reports it), the usage windows with projected run-out times, and the cache's estimated expiry, each with its scope. Unknown figures are null, and it gives no advice. Its description tells Claude to use it when you ask, and not to change model, effort or compaction on its own. Two honest notes: the result enters the conversation like any tool result, so it goes to your model provider with the rest of the conversation; and the tool is deferred only where tool search is available.

Privacy and what it runs

• Reads: the figures Claude Code hands every mod (usage, turns, tool calls and their results' success, subagents, compactions). It doesn't read the transcript file.
• Keeps: per session per day, numbers only (cost at API prices, turns, tool calls, cold rebuilds, agents) in Claude Code's plugin store, deleted after 35 days; your choices made with /g-line; when you last opened the news reader; and, with Pulse on, the last feed.
• Runs: git status only with git: true or while the pane is open; your account_command only if you set one; open (or xdg-open) with a feed link when you ask the reader to open one.
• Sends: nothing, unless Pulse is on (one GET of a static file) or you enable claude_reads (the snapshot goes into your conversation).
• Writes: a one-line timestamp at ~/.cache/glanceline/live/<session id> so an older status line command can step aside, and with export_state, a JSON file for other bars.

Upgrading from glanceline 0.3 or 0.4

glanceline is now g-line. The repository moved to lifeofgurpreet/g-line (the old address redirects), and the plugin has a new name, so Claude Code treats it as a new plugin. An installed glanceline updates to a small stub that keeps loading and tells you, once per session, to switch:

/plugin uninstall glanceline
/plugin install g-line --marketplace lifeofgurpreet/g-line

Your ~/.config/glanceline/config.json keeps working. /glanceline still opens the pane until the next release. The day and week totals start again under the new name. If you used the old Python status line (glanceline install), run glanceline uninstall once to put your previous statusLine back. g-line no longer ships that fallback.

Develop

See AGENTS.md: the rules g-line stands on, a map of the code, and recipes for adding a figure or a receipt event.

claude --plugin-dir .        # a session with your working copy; saving reloads it
claude plugin validate .     # what the engine reads, the hooks and calls, what it would refuse
claude plugin test .         # the tests

The screenshots and the demo are real captures (tmux capture-pane -e), drawn by scripts/ansi2png.py and cut by scripts/frames.py. tools/pulse/ builds the Pulse feed on the maintainer's machine; it isn't part of the mod.

License

MIT