cc-monitor

Real-time token usage and cost monitor for Claude Code sessions, in your terminal.

A Textual TUI that tails Claude Code's session logs, correlates them with the hook event stream, and gives you a live view of every active project, every session, and every model — with live 5h-block tracking so you know how close you are to your plan limit before the bill (or the rate limit) catches you off guard.

Table of contents

• Features
• Screenshots
• Installation
  • Prerequisites
  • uv (recommended)
  • pipx
  • pip
  • From source
• Quick start
• CLI flags
• Configuration
• Development
• Acknowledgements
• License

Features

• Live 5h-block tracking — progress bar against your Anthropic plan limit (auto-derived P90 in offline mode; authoritative /api/oauth/usage numbers when OAuth is available)
• Toast notifications at 80% and 100% of cost ceiling so you don't have to babysit the screen
• Sessions / Projects / Models tabs with click-to-sort columns, date / cost / model filters, and full keyboard navigation
• Per-session detail screen — usage charts, tool counts, file-read / file-write hot lists, full per-turn context window utilization
• Project detail screen — same metrics rolled up across every session in the project, plus 7-day cumulative cost / token charts
• CSV / JSON export of sessions, projects, and models for pandas / Excel analysis
• Cross-run state snapshot — quit and relaunch in <1s even with hundreds of sessions and an 8-day archive
• Cache-aware detail screens — first open parses the JSONL once; re-opens are instant
• Mouse and keyboard fully wired — clickable filter chips, back button, sort headers, drill-in rows; or use 1/2/3///,/? for everything
• In-app update notifications — an unobtrusive PyPI check on launch surfaces a one-click "Update?" modal (uv / pipx / pip aware) when a newer release is available, so you never miss a fix
• Archive-viewer mode — point cc-monitor at copied ~/.claude/projects/ data on a machine without Claude Code installed and it'll still render costs, tokens, and per-session breakdowns over the historical data

Screenshots

Main view (Sessions tab)	Session detail

Project detail	Settings

Installation

Supported platforms: Linux, macOS, and Windows. cc-monitor works the same way on all three — including archive-viewer mode on machines without Claude Code installed (just point it at copied ~/.claude/projects/ data). Please open an issue if you hit platform-specific bugs.

Prerequisites

You need Python 3.11 or newer. Check with python3 --version (POSIX) or python --version (Windows). If you don't have it:

• Linux: apt install python3 / dnf install python3 / your distro's package manager
• macOS: brew install python or grab the installer from python.org
• Windows: winget install Python.Python.3.12 or download from python.org

uv (recommended)

uv is the fastest option — installs cc-monitor into an isolated virtualenv, sidesteps PEP 668 ("externally-managed-environment") on modern Linux, works identically on macOS and Windows.

Install uv (one-time):

• Linux / macOS:

  curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
  

• Windows (PowerShell):

  powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"
  

• See docs.astral.sh/uv for other options (Homebrew, MacPorts, etc.).

Install cc-monitor:

uv tool install cc-monitor

pipx

pipx is a good alternative if you already use it for other CLI tools.

Install pipx (one-time): see pipx.pypa.io.

pipx install cc-monitor

pip

Last-resort path; prefer uv or pipx because they isolate the install. Plain pip may fail on Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora and recent macOS homebrew Python (PEP 668 marks the system Python as "externally-managed").

pip install --user cc-monitor

If you hit error: externally-managed-environment, switch to uv or pipx above.

From source

git clone https://github.com/boldsamurai/cc-monitor.git
cd cc-monitor
uv tool install .

If cc-monitor isn't on PATH after install, run uv tool dir to see where uv put the shim and add that directory to your shell's PATH. Typical locations:

• Linux / macOS: ~/.local/bin (already on PATH for most shells)
• Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\uv\tools\cc-monitor\Scripts

Quick start

Just run:

cc-monitor

Windows users: launch from Windows Terminal (preinstalled on Windows 11, free in the Microsoft Store on Windows 10), not the classic cmd.exe. Textual TUIs need ANSI/VT support that classic cmd doesn't reliably provide — you'd see escape-code garbage instead of the rendered interface.

On first launch it will:

1. Install a hook into ~/.claude/settings.json so Claude Code feeds it tool_start / tool_end events (idempotent, safe to re-run).
2. Replay every JSONL in ~/.claude/projects/ to populate the 8-day archive.
3. Auto-detect OAuth credentials. If found, pull authoritative 5h / 7d utilization from Anthropic. Otherwise fall back to a P90-derived local ceiling.
4. Drop you into the Sessions tab.

Press ? at any time for the keyboard cheatsheet (ctrl+h and F1 also work).

CLI flags

Everything else (theme, date format, default tab, refresh interval, filter persistence, confirms) is editable from the in-app Settings screen — , key from the main view.

Configuration

Cross-platform paths: ~ is your home directory.

• Linux: /home/<user>/
• macOS: /Users/<user>/
• Windows: C:\Users\<user>\ (Python's Path.home() resolves ~ to %USERPROFILE%, then we use literal .config\cc-monitor\ and .cache\cc-monitor\ subdirectories — non-standard for Windows but consistent across platforms).

None of the above is committed to your repo.

Development

git clone https://github.com/boldsamurai/cc-monitor.git
cd cc-monitor
uv sync                      # install runtime + dev deps
uv run pytest                # 115 tests
uv run cc-monitor            # launch from source

Acknowledgements

Built with Textual and plotext (via textual-plotext). The 5h-block detection algorithm is informed by Maciek-roboblog/Claude-Code-Usage-Monitor.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.