Throttle Meter: Open-Source Claude Code Usage Meter for macOS
Claude Code's built-in usage warnings come at 90% — often too late. The 5-hour rolling window is invisible until you're throttled. Throttle Meter is an open-source macOS app (14+) that sits in your menu bar and reads ~/.claude/projects/*.jsonl locally to compute live usage. No telemetry, no network, no signup.
Free Open-Source Version (MIT)
- Live % in menu bar — session 5h, weekly all, weekly Sonnet
- Rolling 7-day window math matching claude.ai's actual reset behavior
- "X tokens saved this week" hero card from token-opt hooks (session-start router + structured pre-compact) that prune irrelevant context. On a multi-project setup it skips ~80k tokens/week
- Threshold notifications at 80% / 95%
- One-tap Calendar reminder for next weekly reset
- Stats: usage trend chart, model split + EUR cost extrapolation, share-to-social badge
- Diagnostics export for support
- Buildable from source: xcodegen + Xcode 16 + macOS 14
Hook scripts (POSIX shell, also work on Linux) are in scripts/hooks/.
Commercial Sibling: Throttle (€19)
Same local meter plus features not feasible as open-source:
- Exact mode: drives your already-signed-in Safari via AppleScript and runs
fetch('/api/organizations/{org_id}/usage')in Safari's context — cookies stay in Safari, never seen by Throttle. Caveat: unofficial; breaks if Anthropic changes the endpoint (free Meter keeps working). - Hour-of-day heatmap, top-projects breakdown
- AI Assistant (Apple Intelligence / Claude Pro Safari Bridge / BYO API key) that audits
CLAUDE.md,settings.json, hooks via real tool calls and emits patches with diff preview - Sparkle auto-update
Site: lorislab.fr/throttle (€19 launch, €29 stable, 30-day refund)
The author notes the math is the most likely to be wrong — feedback welcome if the meter doesn't match what you see on claude.ai.
📖 Read the full source: r/ClaudeAI
👀 See Also
Claude Code Adds Auto Mode for Permission Decisions
Claude Code now has an auto mode that lets Claude handle permission decisions instead of requiring manual approval for every file write and bash command. This mode includes safeguards that check each action before it runs, with a classifier reviewing tool calls for potentially destructive actions.
Claude Command Center: Open-Source Dashboard for Claude Code Analytics
Claude Command Center is a local dashboard that reads your ~/.claude/ directory to display Claude Code session data, costs, and MCP server configurations. Built entirely using Claude Code with an Express backend and React frontend, it requires zero configuration and runs locally with no cloud or telemetry.
VS Code Agent Kanban: Markdown-based task management for AI coding agents
VS Code Agent Kanban is an extension that creates a GitOps-friendly kanban board inside VS Code using markdown files as task records. It addresses context rot in AI coding agents by preserving planning conversations, decisions, and implementation details in version-controlled .md files.
Caliber: Local CLI tool generates AI coding assistant configs from your repo
Caliber is a local-first CLI tool that scans repositories in languages like TypeScript, Python, Go, and Rust, then generates prompt and configuration files for AI coding assistants including Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex. It runs entirely on your machine with your own keys, has 13k npm installs, and is open source under MIT license.